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A  WINTER  CIRCUIT  OF 
OUR  ARCTIC  COAST 


A  WINTEK  CIECUIT  OF 
OUE  AECTIC  COAST 

A    NARRATIVE    OF    A  JOURNEY   WITH    DOG-SLEDS 
AROUND  THE   ENTIRE  ARCTIC  COAST  OF  ALASKA 


BY 

HUDSON  STUCK,  D.D.,  F.R.G.S. 

ARCHDEACON    OP    THJK    YUKON    AND    THE    ABCTIO 


WITH  MAPS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1920 


70993 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  April  1920 


IN  LOVING  MEMORY  OF 

WALTER    HARPER 

COMPANION   OF   THIS   AND   MANY   OTHER   JOURNEYS 

STRONG,    GENTLE,    BRAVE,   AND   CLEAN 

WHO   WAS    DROWNED    IN    THE    LYNN    CANAL 

WHEN   THE    "princess    SOPHIA  "    FOUNDERED 

WITH   HER   ENTIRE    COMPANY 

25th  OCTOBER,    1918 


PREFACE 

This  is  my  fourth,  and  will,  I  am  sure,  be  my  last, 
book  of  Alaskan  travel;  indeed  I  had  thought  the  third 
would  be  the  last.  When  one  has  described  winter 
travel  at  great  length,  and  then  summer  travel  (which 
means  the  rivers)  at  great  length,  and  has  described 
the  mountains  and  the  ascent  of  the  chiefest  of  them, 
there  would  seem  little  need  to  chronicle  further  wan- 
derings. 

But  my  journey  of  the  winter  of  1917-18  carried  me 
completely  around  a  distinct  region  of  great  interest 
that  had  been  no  more  than  barely  touched  by  my 
previous  narratives — the  Arctic  coast — and  seemed  suf- 
ficiently full  of  new  impressions  and  experiences  to  be 
worth  writing  about. 

That  coast  has  of  course  been  well  known  for  seventy- 
five  years;  I  have  no  discoveries  or  explorations  to  re- 
cord. Yet  in  one  respect  the  journey  was  fresh  and  even 
singular.  Whether  anyone  ever  made  the  circuit  of  that 
coast  in  the  winter-time  before  I  know  not,  but  I  am 
sure  it  was  never  made  before  in  the  winter-time  by 
one  having  for  his  purpose  a  general  enquiry  into  Eski- 
mo conditions ;  yet  the  winter  is  the  time  when  the  normal 
activities  of  the  villages,  with  their  schools  and  missions, 
are  in  operation.  All  such  visits  of  bishops  and  super- 
intendents and  inspectors  and  interested  travellers — not 
to  mention  wandering  archdeacons — have  been  made 
hitherto  in  the  summer-time,  when  the  annual  trip  of  the 
revenue  cutter  offers  suitable  opportunity  of  passage, 
and  when  the  natives  are  scattered  and  their  normal  ac- 
tivities intermitted.  For  it  is  more  and  more  true  as  one 
goes  further  north  that  the  winter  life  is  the  normal  life, 
since  it  comprises  a  larger  and  larger  part  of  the  year. 

These  people  are  ''scientifically  known";  the  heads  of 


viii  PREFACE 

nearly  all  the  living  have  been  measured  and  the  bones  of 
nearly  all  the  dead  have  been  gathered  and  shipped  to  in- 
stitutions of  learning  in  the  United  States.  That  great 
charnel  house,  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  boasts  several 
thousands  of  their  skulls.  Their  language,  their  primitive 
culture,  their  myths  and  legends,  their  handicrafts,  their 
dress,  their  manners  and  customs,  have  been  suflSciently 
examined  and  illustrated,  and  the  shelves  of  museums 
everywhere  groan  under  the  result.  I  have  no  contribu- 
tion to  make  along  these  lines.  My  purpose  was  an  en- 
quiry into  their  present  state,  physical,  mental,  moral 
and  religious,  industrial  and  domestic,  into  their  pros- 
pects, into  what  the  government  and  the  religious  organ- 
izations have  done  and  are  doing  for  them,  and  what 
should  yet  be  done. 

Moreover,  the  Arctic  coast  of  Alaska  has  a  history  of 
great  interest,  with  which  I  have  long  been  making  my- 
self familiar,  with  much  of  which  I  have  been  familiar  all 
my  life,  for  the  narrative  of  the  Arctic  explorers  of  the 
early  decades  of  the  last  century  over  which  I  used  to 
pore  as  a  boy,  gave  me  my  first  intellectual  stimulus. 
Those  modest  and  simple  narratives  are,  I  think,  as  much 
superior  to  recent  books  of  polar  travel  as  their  delicately 
beautiful  steel  engravings  are  superior  to  the  smudgy 
photographic  half-tones  with  which  most  modern  Arctic 
books  are  disfigured — including  the  present  one.  Unless 
one  can  carry  along  such  an  artist-photographer  as  Her- 
bert Pouting  or  Vittoria  Sella,  winter  photography  north 
of  the  tree  line  is  likely  to  be  a  disappointment  to  the 
photographer  and  anything  but  an  ''embellishment"  to 
a  book. 

As  I  have  retraced  my  own  steps  along  the  coast  of 
Alaska  in  this  narrative,  I  have  sought  to  introduce  the 
accounts  of  the  first  acquaintance  of  white  men  with  it, 
have  drawn  freely  upon  the  great  explorers  and  naviga- 
tors who  determined  and  described  the  limits  of  the 
North  American  continent,  and  opened  the  shores  of  "the 
frozen  ocean"  to  the  knowledge  of  mankind. 


PREFACE  ix 

In  the  main  the  country  traversed  is  as  dreary  and 
naked  as  I  suppose  can  be  found  on  earth,  and  cursed  with 
as  bitter  a  climate ;  yet  it  is  not  without  scenes  of  great 
beauty  and  even  sublimity,  and  its  winter  aspects  have 
often  an  almost  indescribable  charm ;  a  radiance  of  light, 
a  delicate  lustre  of  azure  and  pink,  that  turn  jagged  ice 
and  windswept  snow  into  marble  and  alabaster  and  crys- 
tal, until  one  fancies  oneself  amidst  the  courts  and  tow- 
ers of  Shadukiam  and  Amberabad  where  the  peris  fixed 
their  dwelling. 

The  scattered  inhabitants  the  reader  may  call  savages 
if  it  please  him;  they  are  certainly  primitive  and  have 
some  habits  and  customs  that  are  not  attractive.  But  I 
think  they  are  the  bravest,  the  cheeriest,  the  most  indus- 
trious, the  most  hospitable,  and  altogether  the  most  win- 
ning native  people  that  I  know  anything  about,  the  most 
deserving  of  the  indulgent  consideration  of  mankind. 

Whether  or  not  I  shall  have  succeeded  in  interesting 
others,  so  soon  as  it  was  begun  this  narrative  assumed 
for  me,  at  a  stroke,  the  most  poignant  and  tragic  interest 
of  anything  I  have  ever  written.  Readers  who  have  been 
so  complaisant  to  me  in  the  past  will  remember  without 
difficulty  the  figure  of  my  young  half-breed  companion 
of  many  journeys ;  will  recall  him  at  the  handle-bars  of 
the  sled,  at  the  steering  wheel  of  the  Pelican,  in  the  lead 
up  the  final  steeps  of  the  great  mountain.  He  accompa- 
nied me  on  the  journey  herein  described.  Going  "out- 
side^' on  one  of  the  last  boats  of  the  season  some  five 
months  after  our  return,  to  offer  himself  for  the  army  if 
, there  were  yet  need,  or  to  enter  college  and  begin  his 
preparation  for  the  career  of  a  medical  missionary,  he 
was  drowned  when  the  Princess  Sophia  foundered  in  the 
Lynn  Canal  with  her  entire  company  of  343  souls,  the 
most  terrible  disaster  in  the  history  of  Alaska.  His  bride 
of  seven  weeks,  a  graduate  nurse  from  our  hospital  here, 
going  out  to  undertake  Red  Cross  work,  shared  his  fate. 
If,  incidentally  to  my  narrative,  I  have  succeeded  in  leav- 
ing some  memorial  in  the  reader's  mind  of  a  very  sweet 


X  PREFACE 

and  clean  character,  most  gentle  and  most  capable,  some 
vindication  of  the  possibilities  of  the  much-decried  half- 
breed,  it  will  be  a  slight  consolation  for  a  very  heavy  loss, 
a  very  deep  sorrow. 

There  is  this  to  add :  that  I  had  provided  this  volmne 
with  an  elaborate  apparatus  of  notes  and  references, 
giving  chapter  and  verse  for  every  citation  of  voyages 
and  travels,  but  that,  upon  its  revision,  I  swept  almost 
the  whole  away.  The  reader  may  take  my  word  for  it 
that  I  have  never  quoted  without  turning  up  the  passage 
in  the  original  work,  unless  I  have  stated  the  contrary. 
It  seemed  unwise  to  break  the  continuity  of  the  narrative 
with  frequent  footnotes,  and  there  seemed  a  certain 
pedantry  in  bolstering  up  with  authorities  a  book  which 
does  not  aspire  to  the  formal  dignity  of  a  work  of  refer- 
ence. It  is  too  free  and  discursive,  too  personal — the 
reader  may  even  think  too  opinionated — for  such  char- 
acter. 

I  have  to  express  my  grateful  thanks  to  Dr.  and  Mrs. 
Grafton  Burke  for  every  possible  domestic  convenience 
and  relief  during  the  composition  of  another  book;  and 
to  make  my  warm  acknowledgment  to  Mrs.  Kathleen 
Hore  for  her  careful,  intelligent  transcription  of  another 
manuscript,  and  for  the  patient  preparation  of  what  I 
trust  w^ill  be  a  satisfactory  index. 

Thanks  are  also  due  to  Mr.  Alfred  Brooks,  the  chief  of 
the  Alaskan  Division  of  the  United  States  Geological  Sur- 
vey, for  permission  to  reproduce  Mr.  Ernest  De  Koven 
Leffingwell's  new  map  of  the  North  coast  of  Alaska,  the 
resut  of  so  many  years'  devoted  labour. 

FoBT  Yukon,  Alaska. 
April,    1919. 


ERRATA 

The  first  word  in  the  caption  of  the  illustration  opposite  page  150  should  be 
Argo,  not  Lingo. 

Page  164 — "brought"  in  the  last  sentence  in  the  second  paragraph  should 
read  "bought." 

Page  304— The  date  of  Kallet's  exploit  given  as  1890  should  be  1850. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  FAOB 

Preface          vii 

I    From  Fort  Yukon  to  Kotzebue  Sound  ...  3 

II    Kotzebue  Sound  to  Point  Hope      ....  83 

III  Point  Hope 101 

IV  Point  Hope  to  Point  Barrow 155 

V    Point  Barrow 209 

VI    The  Northern  Extreme 239 

VII    Point  Barrow  to  Flaxman  Island  ....  263 

VIII    Flaxman  Island  and  the  Journey  to  Herschel 

Island 289 

IX    Herschel    Island   and   the   Journey   to    Fort 

Yukon 319 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Rocks  of  Cape  Lisbume      ......      l..      .    Frontispiece 


PACING 
PAGE 


Cape  Thompson ,      ....  96 

The  Igloos  at  Point  Hope       ........  102 

Point  Hope — The  School  and  the  Children  .       .      ,.       .  116 

Point  Hope — Jigging  for  Tom  Cod 120 

The  Three  at  the  Point  Hope  Mission 124 

Natural  Arch  at  Cape  Thompson 134 

Lingo — The  Superannuated  and  Pensioned  Dog,  Playmate 

of  Convalescent  Children  at  the  Fort  Yukon  Hospital  150 

The  Departure  from  Point  Hope — The  Mission  House      .  156 
Point  Hope — The  Native  Council  .       .       .       .       .       .162 

The  Point  Hope  Reindeer  Herd  at  I-Yag'-A-Tak  .  .  .164 
The  Gulch  of  the  I-Yag'-A-Tak  River  Down  Which  We 

Came  to  Cut  Out  Cape  Lisburne 166 

Dangerous  Travel  Around  Open  Water  from  Which  the  Ice 

Has  Been  Blown  by  an  Off-shore  Gale  ....  174 

Point  Lay — Arrival 186 

Wainwright — Schoolhouse 194 

A  Point  Barrow  Mother  and  Child 218 

The  Church  and  Congregation  at  Point  Barrow  .       .       .  222 

Flaw  Whaling  at  Point  Barrow 232 

Flaw  Whaling  at  Point  Barrow 234 

The   Actual  Point  Barrow — The  Northern   Extreme  of 

Alaska 240 

March  Sun  at  Point  Barrow 240 

Stop  for  Lunch— North  Coast 268 

The  Thirteen  Dogs— Cape  Halkett 272 

Tent  Within  Walls  of  Snow— Harrison  Bay  .       .       .       .276 

Beacon  at  Beechey  Point 280 

Rough  Ice  Near  Return  Reef  of  Franklin      ....  282 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FICINQ 
PAGE 


North  Coast— Cooking  Dog-Feed 302 

Rough  lee  off  Barter  Island 306 

The  North  Coast 308 

Demarcation  Point — Welcome  by  the  Natives  .  .  .  310 
Entering  the  Firth  or  Herschel  Island  River — The  First 

WiUows 330 

The  Firth  or  Herschel  Island  River — The  First  Spruce     .  334 

Rocks  on  the  Firth  River 338 

Dr.  Burke  and  Mr.  Stefansson  and  His  Attendants,  as  I 

Met  Them  on  the  Porcupine  River 346 

MAPS 

Map  of  the  North  Arctic  Coast,  Alaska       .  At  end  of  volume 
Map  of  Northern  Alaska  to  illustrate  a  jour- 
ney around  the  Arctic  Coast  .       .       .   "      <«     «<  «« 


PAKT  I 
FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND 

Being  minded  to  spend  the  winter  of  1917-18  amongst 
the  Eskimos  of  the  Arctic  coast  and  having  the  bishop's 
consent  thereto,  I  laid  my  plans,  as  is  necessary  in  the 
north,  well-nigh  a  year  ahead,  had  certain  supplies  that 
were  not  procurable,  or  that  I  supposed  were  not  pro- 
curable on  the  coast,  shipped  to  Point  Hope  and  to  Point 
Barrow,  and  wrote  letters  to  these  and  other  stations 
announcing  my  intention,  and  setting  approximate  dates. 

I  had  carefully  worked  out  the  distance  from  Fort 
Yukon  to  the  coast,  all  around  the  coast  and  back  to  Fort 
Yukon  again,  and  judged  it  well  within  the  compass  of  a 
leisurely  winter  journey  without  travelling  at  all  in  the 
month  of  January.    I  judged,  moreover,  that  with  good 
fortune  in  the  matter  of  weather  and  an  early  season,  I 
could  reach  Point  Hope,  where  the  Episcopal  Church  has 
its  only  mission  on  the  Arctic  coast,  for  Christmas,  and 
made  that  appointment  with  my  friend  who  had  just  gone 
to  that  lonely  charge.    There  I  would  lie,  as  I  planned, 
not  only  over  Christmas,  but  throughout  January,  not 
desiring  to  reach  Point  Barrow  until  the  1st  of  March,  or 
to  leave  there  for  the  journey  along  the  north  coast  until 
the  middle  of  that  month.    I  set  from  the  5th  to  the  15th 
April  for  my  arrival  at  Herschel  Island,  being  without 
definite  information  of  the  little-travelled   country   be- 
tween, and  the  1st  May  as  the  latest  safe  day  for  my  re- 
turn across  country  to  Fort  Yukon.    Approaching  Fort 
Yukon  by  the  Porcupine  river,  one  can  reasonably  count 
upon  travelling  a  week  later  than  if  one  approach  by  the 
Yukon,  since  the  Porcupine  ice  is  usually  a  week  later 
in  breaking  up. 
Thus  I  expected  to  avail  myself  of  the  earliest  and  the 

8 


4  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

latest  travel  of  the  winter,  as  well  that  I  might  have 
abundant  leisure  at  the  important  settlements  of  Point 
Hope  and  Point  Barrow,  as  that  I  might  avoid  travelling 
in  the  storms  and  darkness  of  mid- winter. 

I  had  set  5th  November  as  the  day  for  starting  on  the 
journey,  well  knowing  that  unless  the  winter  season  were 
early  I  should  have  to  defer  it.  But  everything  in  the 
way  of  weather  was  favourable.  The  Porcupine  having 
closed  on  the  18th  October,  the  Yukon  closed  on  the  23rd, 
a  very  early  closing  indeed,  eight  days  earlier  than  the 
previous  year,  seventeen  days  earlier  than  in  1915  and 
twenty-five  days  earlier  than  in  1914.  So  it  was  a  very 
early  season.  There  was  just  enough  snow  on  the  ground 
to  permit  travelling ;  the  closing  of  the  river  was  accom- 
panied by  a  sharp  cold  spell,  which  was,  of  course,  the 
reason  for  its  earliness,  and  for  some  days  thereafter  the 
thermometer  fell  so  low  as  to  guarantee  the  sealing  of 
all  waters  that  we  should  use  and  the  thickening  of  ice 
to  a  state  of  safety.  All  natural  conditions  were  pro- 
pitious. 

Yet  was  the  start  deferred,  and,  for  awhile,  the  whole 
enterprise  in  jeopardy.  On  the  14th  October  my  com- 
panion, Walter  Harper,  having  been  ailing  for  some  time, 
went  to  bed  in  the  hospital  with  a  high  fever,  and  when 
Dr.  Burke  returned  on  the  15th  he  suspected  typhoid, 
which  a  few  days'  observation  confirmed.  On  the  23rd, 
the  day  the  Yukon  closed,  the  doctor  told  me  that  at  best 
Walter  would  be  in  no  condition  to  travel  for  a  month 
and  it  might  be  much  longer.  Now  a  start  at  the  end  of 
November  would  put  Christmas  at  Point  Hope  out  of  the 
question,  would  throw  out  the  whole  itinerary  and  arouse 
anxiety  wherever  I  was  expected  along  the  route.  Yet  to 
take  another  companion  was  not  only  most  distasteful 
but  would  overthrow  one  cherished  part  of  the  winter's 
plans.  It  is  not  every  chance  Indian  with  whom  one  is 
willing  to  enter  upon  the  unrelieved  intimacy  of  travel 
on  the  trail ;  eating  together,  sleeping  together,  living  in 
one  another's  company  all  the  time.    But  apart  from  that 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND         5 

I  had  an  obligation  to  Walter  that  unless  we  spent  the 
winter  together  I  could  not  fulfil.  I  had  brought  him 
back  to  Alaska  from  a  school  in  Massachusetts  where  two 
years '  more  work  would  have  made  him  ready  for  college, 
on  the  understanding  that  his  preparation  should  pro- 
ceed. For  three  years  before  he  went  out  he  had  been  my 
pupil,  and  the  relation  was  to  be  resumed.  He  had  jumped 
at  the  chance  of  returning  to  Alaska  and  I  had  been  no 
less  glad  of  his  companionship  again,  but  while  he  had 
done  a  good  deal  of  work  it  had  been  sadly  interrupted 
during  the  previous  summer,  part  of  which  I  had  spent 
away  from  him  on  a  visit  to  Cook's  Inlet  and  Prince 
William's  Sound.  To  go  off  on  this  six  months'  journey 
and  leave  him  behind  was  to  give  up  all  chance  of  his 
being  ready  for  college  in  the  contemplated  time,  and  in 
his  twenty-fifth  year,  with  college  and  medical  school  be- 
fore him,  he  had  no  time  to  waste. 

Had  there  been  means  of  communicating  with  the 
Arctic  coast  I  would  have  abandoned  the  journey  for  the 
year,  when  the  doctor  pronounced  his  judgment.  But 
upon  weighing  all  the  circumstances  I  decided  that  my 
plans  must  be  carried  out.  With  a  heavy  heart  I  set 
about  finding  another  companion  and  at  last  made  a 
tentative  arrangement  with  a  reluctant  Indian  who  had 
little  stomach  for  so  long  and  remote  a  journey. 

But  on  the  30th  October  Walter  was  so  much  improved 
that  he  was  allowed  to  sit  up  a  little.  He  had  lost  twenty 
pounds  weight  in  his  sickness,  but  day  by  day  his  strength 
returned,  his  appetite  became  enormous,  and  I  began  to 
entertain  hope,  which  indeed  I  think  I  had  never  com- 
pletely abandoned,  that  he  might  be  able  to  go.  On  the 
4th  November  Dr.  Burke  said  that  if  the  improvement 
continued  without  any  setback  and  I  would  take  special 
precautions,  he  thought  Walter  could  travel  in  a  week, 
and  on  the  7th  the  doctor  gave  his  unreserved  permission 
for  Walter  to  go.    Never  was  such  a  rapid  convalescence. 

There  is  something  very  mysterious  about  typhoid 
fever.    It  has  never,  I  think,  been  epidemic  in  Alaska, 


6  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

though  in  the  early  overcrowding  of  Dawson  there  was 
an  outbreak  of  some  severity,  but  sporadic  cases  are  not 
uncommon.  Where  does  the  infection  come  from?  Wal- 
ter had  been  absent  during  the  latter  half  of  September 
on  a  moose  hunt.  He  went  up  the  Yukon  about  an  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  to  the  Charley  river  on  a  steam- 
boat with  an  Indian  companion,  and  for  twelve  days  or  so 
was  out  in  the  hills  killing  and  skinning  his  game  and 
bringing  it  out  to  the  water.  Then  they  constructed  a 
raft,  loaded  the  meat  upon  it,  and  came  floating  triumph- 
antly down  to  Fort  Yukon  with  some  2,500  pounds  of 
prime  meat — enough  to  supply  our  hospital  for  a  great 
part  of  the  winter.  It  was  two  weeks  after  his  return 
that  he  went  to  bed  sick.  There  was  only  one  other  case, 
the  doctor's  little  son,  and  whether  he  contracted  it  from 
Walter  or  Walter  from  him,  it  was  impossible  to  deter- 
mine.   But  where  did  the  infection  come  from? 

However  it  was,  a  load  was  lifted  from  my  heart  and 
from  my  spirits  when  it  was  decided  that  he  could  accom- 
pany me,  and  on  the  8th  November,  only  three  days  after 
the  date  I  had  set,  we  left  Fort  Yukon.  I  had  engaged 
a  stout  Indian  youth  to  accompany  us  for  the  first  200 
miles  that  Walter  might  be  relieved  in  every  possible 
way,  and  had  undertaken  to  see  that  our  convalescent, 
only  nine  days  out  of  bed,  had  hot  soup  from  the  thermos 
bottles  every  two  hours.  All  preparations  and  disposi- 
tions had  long  since  been  made  and  only  the  actual  load- 
ing of  the  sleds  remained.  It  was  one  o'clock  on  Thurs- 
day afternoon  the  8th  November,  the  sleds  all  lashed,  the 
dogs  hitching,  when  I  slipped  away  from  the  mission 
to  avoid  the  long  agony  of  native  good-byes  and  took  a 
back  route  to  the  Chandelar  trail.  They  knew  whither 
I  was  bound,  these  Indians,  and  had,  of  old,  none  too 
good  an  opinion  of  the  ''huskies"  as  they  call  the  Eski- 
mos, and  some  of  the  elders  had  expressed  a  fear  that 
I  would  never  return.  When  the  sleds  left.  Dr.  Burke 
commandeered  a  passing  native  team  with  the  purpose 
of  accompanying  us  for  a  few  miles.    A  recently  arrived 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND         7 

white  man  with  an  unsuspected  commission  from  a  Fair- 
banks journal  for  news,  seeing  the  doctor  start  with  my 
teams,  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  he  also  was  going 
on  the  journey  and,  without  making  enquiries,  sent  a 
message  to  that  effect.  The  news  was  sent  from  Fair- 
banks to  Nome,  was  telephoned  across  the  Seward  penin- 
sula to  Candle  creek,  appeared  in  the  bulletin  there,  was 
carried  by  the  mail  to  Kotzebue  and  thence  all  along  the 
coast ;  and  almost  as  far  as  Point  Barrow  I  was  annoyed 
by  enquiries  for  the  doctor.  Our  new  ''radio"  station 
is  a  great  convenience,  but  at  times  something  of  a  nui- 
sance also.  It  was  a  surprise  and  an  annoyance  to  find 
that  communication  with  the  Arctic  coast  could  be  so 
prompt  and  so  misleading. 

The  teams  caught  up  with  me  in  about  five  miles  and  we 
made  no  more  than  another  five  and  then  camped.  It  is 
next  to  impossible  to  get  an  early  start  from  a  mission, 
and  that  is  why  we  pulled  out  a  few  miles  and  made  camp. 
It  was  cold  in  the  tent  that  night,  40  degrees  below  zero, 
but  we  had  plenty  of  bedding  and  the  two  boys  and  I 
were  snug  and  cosy.  Outside  twelve  well-fed  dogs  made 
themselves  comfortable  on  their  brush  piles  also.  Poor 
beasts !  ten  of  them  were  intended  to  go  all  the  way,  and 
would  often  have  cause  to  regret  the  good  food  of  the 
interior  and  the  spruce  brush  that  kept  them  off  the  snow, 
were  dogs  capable  of  regret;  two  of  them  were  to  take 
Paul  back  when  his  stage  of  attendance  was  done. 

Snug  as  I  was  I  did  not  sleep — I  never  sleep  the  first 
night  or  two  on  the  trail — but  I  lay  and  thought.  I  had 
never  expected  to  be  so  happy  leaving  Fort  Yukon  again, 
but  I  was  eager  for  this  journey  with  the  keenness  of  my 
first  Alaskan  travel,  and  my  heart  was  full  of  gratitude 
that  things  had  turned  out  so  well.  The  reaction  from 
the  heaviness  of  ten  days  ago  had  sent  my  spirits  high. 

There  is  something  very  attractive  about  the  complete 
detachment  from  the  world  which  such  a  journey  as  we 
were  started  upon  involves.  Three  or  four  oppoitunities 
for  the  despatch  of  letters  I  should  have  during  the  win- 


8  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ter,  but  no  opportunity  whatever  of  receiving  any.  The 
anxieties  of  my  affairs  fell  off  me  like  a  mantle  as  I  re- 
alized this.  What  I  could  do  to  make  provision  for  the 
hospital  at  Fort  Yukon,  which  threatened  to  be  in  finan- 
cial straits  ere  I  returned,  I  had  done  by  writing  of  a 
pamphlet  to  be  printed  and  circulated.  Such  arrange- 
ment as  I  could  make  for  the  visiting  by  others  of  places 
usually  included  in  my  winter's  itinerary,  but  this  year 
omitted,  had  been  made.  And  since  no  further  exercise 
in  any  such  affairs  could  have  any  result  whatever,  I 
cleared  my  mind  of  them  as  a  merchant  clears  his  desk, 
and  there  lay  nothing  before  me  but  the  business  of  the 
journey  and  what  thereto  appertained.  Not  a  letter  in 
six  months!  My  correspondence  is  perhaps  the  most 
eagerly  expected  thing  in  my  life  and  perhaps  the  most 
enjoyed,  yet  now  that  I  knew  it  must  suffer  this  com- 
plete cessation,  it  did  not  trouble  me  at  all.  What  an 
accumulation  I  should  find  upon  my  return !  And  though 
I  could  not  hear  from  my  friends  I  could  write  to  them, 
and  write  to  them  from  most  interesting  places.  Not 
only  no  letters  but  no  newspapers,  no  magazines,  even,  as 
we  thought,  no  news  at  all,  would  reach  us.  But  in  that 
we  were  wrong.  Not  until  we  were  travelling  the  north 
coast  were  we  actually  taking  the  news  with  us.  It  is 
written  in  my  diary  that  night  that  I  was  at  peace  with 
the  whole  world — except  the  Germans — and  was  very 
happy. 

The  journey  was  one  that  I  had  long  wanted  to  make. 
When  I  came  to  Alaska  thirteen  years  before  I  had  car- 
ried a  commission  as  ''archdeacon  of  the  Yukon  and  of 
the  Arctic  regions  to  the  north  of  the  same,"  but  I  had 
never  so  far  had  opportunity  to  visit  the  hyperborean 
part  of  my  domain.  My  acquaintance  with  the  Eskimos 
at  the  Allakaket  and  on  the  Kobuk  had  whetted  my 
desire  to  see  more  of  them;  the  long  stretch  of  the  west 
coast  had  always  appealed  to  me;  the  little  known  and 
more  mysterious  north  coast  called  even  louder;  and 
here,  by  my  side,  was  the  one  person  of  all  mankind  I 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND         9 

had  rather  have,  and  he  miraculously  restored  when  it 
had  seemed  inevitable  that  he  be  left  behind !  I  ran  over 
the  work  we  would  do  together.  In  little  India  paper 
volumes  we  had  all  Shakespeare's  plays,  Macaulay's  es- 
says, the  Decline  and  Fall  (my  own  steady  reading  on 
the  trail  for  years  but  this  winter  to  be  of  use  for  Walter 
also,  as  I  hoped).  I  thought  that  in  six  months  we  could 
cover  much  if  not  most  of  this  ground  in  English.  Fol- 
lowing two  severe  seasons,  please  God  this  would  be  a 
mild  one,  with  light  snow,  and  we  should  not  have  day 
after  day  the  labour  which  leaves  men  exhausted  at  night 
with  a  craving  for  sleep  which  makes  study  impossible. 

If  Walter  lay  awake  and  thought,  I  judge  that  his  an- 
ticipations were  as  pleasant  as  mine,  though  of  a  different 
cast.  Keen  for  the  journey  as  I  was,  I  think  they  cen- 
tred round  a  polar  bear,  with  occasional  excursions  to  a 
seal  and  a  walrus,  and  I  will  not  venture  that  even  a  whale 
did  not  come  within  their  scope.  He  had  killed  all  our 
large  land  mammals  from  boyhood  up ;  this  fall  he  had 
killed  seven  moose  and  two  caribou ;  and  mountain  sheep, 
black  bear,  brown  bear,  were  old  stories  to  him.  I  knew 
that  he  had  set  his  heart  on  a  polar  bear  and  was  resolved 
that  he  should  have  one  if  it  could  be  compassed. 

It  was  hard  for  me  to  think  of  him  as  a  man,  approach- 
ing the  end  of  his  twenty-fifth  year  as  he  was;  he  was 
always  to  me  the  boy  that  I  had  found  on  the  Yukon,  the 
boy  who  had  blundered  and  kindled  as  he  read  Robinson 
Crusoe  aloud  to  me,  that  immortal  work  of  genius,  and 
later  Treasure  Island,  of  which  its  author  was  justified 
in  saying  *'If  this  doesn't  fetch  the  kids  they've  gone 
rotten  since  my  time ' ' — and  not  the  kids  only ; — who  had 
gained  his  first  fragmentary  acquaintance  with  history 
in  that  most  delightful  of  ways,  a  long  series  of  Henty's 
books,  also  read  aloud.  I  am  sorry  for  the  boy  who 
does  not  know  Henty;  Walter  had  built  up  no  con- 
temptible grasp  of  the  great  events  of  history  by  string- 
ing together  these  narratives  and  hanging  them  on  cer- 
tain pegs  of  dates  that  I  had  driven  home.    Some  time 


10  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

since  I  read  a  condemnation  of  these  books  on  the  score 
that  they  conveyed  false  views  of  history,  but  a  false 
view  or  a  true  view  of  any  history  depends  largely  upon 
the  standpoint  and  I  suppose  Henty  was  as  much  entitled 
to  his  as  another.  Beside,  what  do  a  boy's  ''views"  mat- 
ter? The  thing  is  to  get  the  information  into  his  head,  to 
fire  and  fan  his  imagination,  to  extend  his  horizon.  And 
whatever  may  come  to  him  later  I  would  rather  he  were 
nurtured  in  the  generous  and  chivalrous  school  of  Scott 
and  Henty  than  in  the  sordid  and  cynical  school  prevail- 
ing today,  however  painfully  and  impossibly  impartial 
it  may  strive  to  be.  Shakespeare's  history  may  be  true 
or  false — one  thinks  sometimes  that  the  writers  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign  were  not  so  utterly  ignorant  of  the 
Lancastrian  and  Yorkist  affair  as  their  critics  of  three 
centuries  later  maintain — but  true  or  false  Shakespeare's 
history  is  likely  to  remain  history  for  nine-tenths  of 
English-speaking  people. 

We  had  fallen  into  the  habit  of  calling  Henty 's  boy- 
hero,  whose  footsteps  echo  down  all  the  corridors  of  time, 
''Cedric,"  and  when  a  new  story  was  begun,  whether 
of  ancient  Egypt  or  of  the  Crusades  or  of  the  American 
Eevolution,  Walter  would  say  "Here  comes  Cedric," 
when  the  gallant  and  fortunate  youth  made  a  new  reincar- 
nation in  the  first  chapter.  There  must  be  fifty  or  sixty 
of  these  books,  and  there  may  be  an  hundred  for  aught 
I  know,  and  ''Cedric"  bobs  up  in  all  of  them  with  the 
same  gallantry  and  the  same  marvellous  luck.  Together 
they  form  a  most  valuable  and  interesting  compendium 
of  history  for  youth,  and  I  have  often  been  glad  of  the 
refreshing  of  my  own  knowledge  while  they  were  reading. 
I  will  confess  that  I  had  my  first  clear  conception  of 
Peterborough's  astonishing  campaign  in  the  war  of  the 
Spanish  Succession  and  my  most  vivid  picture  of  his 
storming  of  Barcelona,  as  also  my  clearest  impressions 
of  Wolfe's  campaign  against  Montcalm  and  the  taking 
of  Quebec,  from  hearing  Henty  read  aloud;  to  which  per- 
haps the  deliberation  of  the  reading  contributed.    Wal- 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZBBUE  SOUND       11 

ter  was  years  past  Henty,  but  he  told  me  that  in  his  his- 
tory work  at  school  the  recollection  of  these  stories  had 
filled  out  the  skeletons  of  text-books  and  had  often  given 
him  a  surprising  advantage  over  his  fellows.  ''Some- 
times I  knew  what  the  teacher  was  talking  about  when 
none  of  the  others  did/'  he  said.  Geometry  and  algebra 
now  took  much  of  his  time,  in  which  I  was  of  little  use 
to  him,  and  Latin,  in  which  I  was  not  much  more.  Nearly 
thirty  years'  disuse  of  subjects  leaves  one  ill-equipped 
for  teaching.  I  had  made  other  arrangements  about  them 
and  confined  myself  to  pressing  literature  and  history 
upon  him,  and  in  making  him  write. 

The  night  passed  quickly,  even  though  without  sleep, 
wholly  concerned  with  such  reflections  as  I  have  indi- 
cated, and  I  was  up  at  five  and  soon  had  breakfast  ready. 
Our  course  was  a  familiar  one  as  far  as  the  Allakaket; 
over  the  frozen  lakes  and  swamps  of  the  Yukon  Flats  to 
the  Chandelar  village,  sixty  miles  or  so  away,  up  the 
Chandelar  river  for  eighty  or  ninety  miles,  over  another 
portage  of  twenty-five  miles  to  the  south  fork  of  the 
Koyukuk,  over  a  low  pass  and  down  a  stream  to  Cold- 
foot  on  the  middle  fork  of  the  latter  river,  and  then 
down  that  river  an  hundred  and  twenty  miles  to  the 
Allakaket  mission.  Thence  we  had  some  sixty  miles  up 
its  tributary  the  Alatna,  another  portage  of  forty  or  fifty 
miles  to  the  Kobuk,  down  which  some  three  hundred 
miles  would  bring  us  to  its  mouth  in  Kotzebue  Sound; 
then  a  journey  up  the  Arctic  coast  of  about  an  hundred 
and  seventy-five  miles  and  we  should  be  at  Point  Hope, 
our  first  objective,  and  altogether  something  over  nine 
hundred  miles  away.    At  Coldfoot  Paul  would  go  back. 

It  was  essential  to  our  programme  that  we  should 
make  good  travel  in  these  early  stages  of  the  journey,  for 
we  knew  not  what  awaited  us  on  the  Arctic  slope.  The 
lightness  of  the  snow,  not  more  than  a  few  inches  deep, 
which  was  a  drawback  on  the  rough  portages,  would  be 
a  great  advantage  on  the  smooth  river  surfaces,  and  we 
might  hope  to  have  that  advantage  not  only  on  the  Chan- 


12  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

delar  but  on  the  Koyukuk,  if  we  pressed  on.    Through 
scattered  brush,  and  scrub  spruce,  and  burned  blackened 
trunks  of  a  forest  fire,  over  lake  after  lake,  the  going 
very  rough  and  heavy  for  our  loaded  sleds  except  when 
we  were  on  ice,  we  reached  an  inhabited  cabin  by  eleven 
o'clock  and  stopped  for  our  lunch;  and  then  on  through 
similar  country,  crossing  the  Christian  river,  tributary 
to  the  Chandelar,  with  great  pitches  up  and  down  the 
banks,  until  we  came  within  five  miles  of  a  cabin  at  which 
we  had  discussed  spending  the  night.    This  place  is  off 
the  main  Chandelar  trail  and  we  had  hesitated  about 
going  to  it,  but  when  we  reached  the  point  where  the 
trail  to  it  leaves  the  main  trail,  we  found  a  great  fire  burn- 
ing, a  dog-team  hitched,  and  two  Indians  waiting.    To 
my  surprise  they  were  waiting  for  us ;  had  been  engaged 
all  day  in  straightening  and  improving  the  trail  and  cut- 
ting out  brush,  and  had  brought  the  dog-team  to  help  us 
in  with  our  loads.    Word  of  our  approaching  departure 
had  been  brought  from  Fort  Yukon  and  they  had  expected 
we  would  come  along  this  evening.    I  was  much  touched 
by  this  attention;  we  gladly  discharged    an    hundred 
pounds  or  so  of  our  load  into  the  empty  toboggan,  and 
in  a  short  time  were  in  Eobert  John's  comfortable  two- 
roomed  cabin,  one  room  of  which  was  placed  entirely 
at  our  service.     A  couple  more  families  were  housed 
within  a  stone 's  throw,  so  that  the  place  was  quite  a  little 
settlement.     There  was  a  good  fishing  stream  near-by, 
firewood  was  handy,  potato  and  turnip  patches  had  been 
cultivated,  and  it  was  in  a  good  region  for  moose  and 
not  far  from  the  threshold  of  the  caribou  country;  alto- 
gether an  eligible  situation  for  outlying  Indians.      That 
night  all  the  folks  gathered  and  we  had  native  service 
with  many  hymns  and  a  brief  address,  and  so  to  bed. 

Luminous-dial  watches  are  a  great  convenience,  and 
the  wrist,  I  think,  is  the  only  place  to  wear  a  watch  that 
is  intended  for  use  and  not  as  mere  appendage  of  a  chain 
or  a  fob — ^unless  one  be  wielding  an  ax,  when  the  jar  is 
too  great  and  the  watch  had  better  be  detached  and  put 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        13 

in  the  pocket;  I  have  not  found  any  other  occupation 
interfere  with  it.  And  despite  all  that  the  watchmakers 
say  I  have  proved  to  my  own  satisfaction  that  a  watch 
keeps  just  as  good  time  on  a  wrist  as  in  a  pocket.  It  is 
curious  what  a  ferocious  prejudice  there  was  in  some 
quarters  against  the  wrist  watch,  until  the  war.  Then  it 
was  generally  discovered  that  no  other  place  in  which  a 
watch  can  be  carried  compares  to  the  wrist  for  general 
convenience.  Hereafter,  I  think,  it  will  be  the  normal 
wear,  and  beyond  any  question  the  luminous  dial  will  be- 
come the  normal  dial.  I  had  worn  my  watch  on  my  wrist 
ever  since  I  came  to  Alaska,  but  I  was  new  to  the  lumi- 
nous dial,  and  the  next  morning  I  read  the  time  as  5.10 
when  it  was  really  2.20.  The  boys  had  been  aroused  and 
a  fire  was  going  before  the  mistake  was  discovered  and 
then  we  went  back  to  bed  for  a  couple  of  hours  or  so. 
The  Chandelar  village  would  be  our  next  stop  and  there 
we  would  spend  Sunday. 

Where  there  are  three  men  and  but  two  sleds  one  man 
must  travel  loose  and  I  like  to  start  well  ahead  of  the 
teams  when  there  is  any  good  sort  of  trail;  so  leaving 
the  others  hitching  the  dogs  I  struck  out  by  myself  and 
was  able  to  do  quite  as  well  as  the  teams  over  that  rough 
ground,  so  that  by  eleven  o'clock  when  I  reached  another 
little  old  cabin  they  were  not  yet  in  sight  or  sound,  and 
here  I  awaited  them.  With  the  thermos  bottles  full  of 
hot  soup,  lunch  is  a  very  simple  matter,  and  with  the 
compressed  and  concentrated  Swiss  cubes,  enriched  with 
a  few  bouillon  capsules,  soup-making  is  very  easy.  But 
why,  save  that  salt  is  cheaper  than  meat  extract,  should 
these  cubes  be  so  saline!  Their  use  for  the  strengthening 
and  enriching  of  soups  and  stews  is  strictly  limited  be- 
cause of  the  excessive  content  of  salt.  One  would  gladly 
dispense  with  the  sticky  and  messy  jars  of  beef  extract 
altogether  and  carry  nothing  but  the  cubes,  if  this  were 
not  the  case. 

Here  I  had  a  chance  of  a  lift,  for  an  Indian  with  an 
empty  toboggan  was  proceeding  to  the  village,  and  I 


14  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

stayed  with  him  until  the  Chandelar  river  was  reached. 
Here  it  grew  dark  and  the  descent  from  the  bank  to  the 
ice  was  so  sudden  and  precipitous  that  I  would  not  leave 
my  teams  to  come  upon  it  unawares,  and  I  let  him  proceed 
alone.  The  empty  toboggan  shot  do^\Ti  the  pitch,  the 
dogs  on  a  dead  run,  and  they  were  soon  out  of  sight  on 
the  smooth  ice  in  the  gathering  gloom,  while  I  built  a  fire 
on  the  bank  and  waited.  These  trails  in  the  Yukon  Flats 
follow  the  same  line  through  the  woods  year  after  year, 
but  there  is  likely  to  be  a  different  approach  to  a  river 
every  season.  The  Chandelar  is  notorious  for  "over- 
flows" and  open  water,  and  every  year  there  is  open 
water  in  the  neighbourhood  where  the  Fort  Yukon  trail 
reaches  it.  Sometimes  the  trail  runs  along  the  river 
bank  for  a  mile  before  it  finds  a  place  where  it  can  de- 
scend to  safe  ice.  This  year  the  descent  was  partic- 
ularly abrupt  and  there  was  open  water  close  to  the  safe 
ice  at  the  bottom.  A  toboggan  can  go  over  these  head- 
long pitches  without  much  danger ;  there  is  little  to  break 
about  a  toboggan;  but  while  the  lesser  of  my  vehicles 
was  a  toboggan,  the  more  important  was  a  birch  sled 
carefully  made  with  a  prime  view  to  other  country  than 
the  Yukon  Flats,  and  heavily  loaded.  It  was  quite  dark 
when  the  teams  arrived,  but  my  blazing  brush  pile 
illuminated  the  bank  and  the  wide  river  with  its  patches 
of  swift  black  water  beyond,  so  that  v/e  made  the  descent 
in  safety,  and  five  miles  of  good  ice-going,  following  the 
track  of  the  precedent  toboggan,  brought  us  the  twinkling 
lights  of  the  village  and  the  glad  sound  of  distant 
dogs. 

These  folks  are  also,  in  a  special  sense,  my  own  people; 
Fort  Yukon  is  their  mart  and  metropolis ;  thither  they  go 
to  be  married  and  take  their  children  to  be  baptized, 
sometimes  spending  weeks  there  at  a  stretch.  It  is  very 
pleasant  to  receive  their  welcome  and  enjoy  their  hospi- 
tality, to  stand  aside  and  let  them  unhitch  the  dogs,  un- 
load the  sleds,  pack  the  stuff  into  the  cabin,  put  the  empty 
vehicles  and  the  harness  high  up  on  some  cache-platform 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       15 

where  they  will  be  in  no  danger  from  the  teeth  of  loose 
dogs,  and  start  an  outdoor  fire  for  cooking  dog-feed. 

This  year  dog-feed  was  exceedingly  scarce.    The  sal- 
mon run,  upon  which  dog-food  entirely,  and  man-food 
largely,  depends  had  been  a  partial  failure  in  the  previous 
summer.   During  the  early  summer,  when  the  king  salmon 
ran,  the  Yukon  had  been  persistently  bank-full,  and  the 
driftwood  that  always  accompanies  flood  had  clogged  and 
stopped  all  fish- wheels.    The  later  runs  of  silver  and  dog- 
salmon  scarce  came  at  all — for  what  mysterious  reason 
no  one  knows — and  the  whole  fish  catch  had  been  the 
least  within  recent  recollection.    Here  in  November  many 
natives  were  cooking  cornmeal  and  tallow  for  their  dogs 
— ^both  imported  and  bought  at  war  prices.     This  may 
not  seem  the  place,  nor  this  even  the  book,  to  speak  upon 
the  necessity  of  the  salmon  to  the  native  life  and  to  de- 
nounce the  recent  iniquity  of  permitting  salmon  canneries 
to  be  established  at  the  mouth  of  the  Yukon,  yet  dog-feed 
is  one  of  the  most  important  winter  requisites,  and  has 
the  most  intimate  connection  with  travel.      Disguised 
as  a  war  measure  for  increasing  the  world's  food  supply 
(it  has  become  almost  a  public  duty  not  to  say  *' camou- 
flaged") it  is  in  reality  only  one  more  instance  of  the  way 
in  which  the  people  of  Alaska  are  deprived  of  their  coun- 
try's resources  by  commercial  greed.     A  government 
which  permits  the  natives  of  the  Yukon  and  its  tribu- 
taries to  be  robbed  of  their  natural  supply  must  pres- 
ently face  the  alternative  of  feeding  them  itself  or  letting 
them  starve.    Such  fluctuation  of  the  fishing  from  year 
to  year  as  is  due  to  the  operations  of  nature  may  be  ex- 
pected and  must  be  endured,  but  the  cannery  will  cause 
a  steady  and  increasing  diminution  until  at  last  the  na- 
tives of  the  upper  and  middle  Yukon  will  find  their  water 
as  void  of  fish  as  from  like  cause  the  natives  of  the  Copper 
river  already  find  theirs.    The  Indians  of  the  plains  were 
largely  exterminated  because  the  white  settlers  needed 
their  lands.    Free  for  ever  from  any  such  danger,  shall 
we  let  the  Indians  of  the  interior  of  Alaska  be  exter- 


16  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

minated  because  a  greedy  packing  company,  already 
grown  ricli  on  the  coast,  needs  the  fish  of  the  inland 
rivers  also  ?  * 

Should  it  bear  proportion  of  space  to  the  trouble  and 
expense  and  anxiety  which  it  caused  us  all  the  winter 
through,  the  matter  of  dog-feed  would  indeed  occupy  no 
small  part  of  this  book.  The  principal  difficulty  of  such 
a  journey  as  this  lies  there;  especially  was  this  true  in 
a  season  of  scarcity,  exceptional  under  old  conditions  but 
likely  to  be  normal  now.  For  the  present  we  were  pro- 
vided. I  had  bought  of  the  scant  king  salmon  when  no 
one  supposed  there  would  be  dearth  of  the  later-running 
varieties,  and  had  cached  it  for  the  first  part  of  this 
journey.  I  knew  that  at  the  Allakaket  mission  they 
would  have  fish  cached  for  me  were  any  procurable  at 
all,  and  some  sort  of  intermediate  provision  could  be 
made  at  Coldfoot  and  Bettles. 

The  Sunday  rest  at  the  Chandelar  mission  was  very 
acceptable,  not  only  because  it  gave  me  a  chance  of  min- 
istering to  this  group  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  natives,  but 
because  I  was  anxious  that  Walter  be  not  unduly  fa- 
tigued. He  was  standing  the  journey  well,  was  eating 
heartily  and  often,  and  I  was  encouraged  to  believe  that 
danger  of  relapse  was  past.  But  for  all  the  first  week 
I  was  rather  uneasy  at  the  responsibility  I  had  taken 
(notwithstanding  the  doctor's  permission)  in  starting 
with  him  so  soon  after  his  sickness. 

The  resourcefulness  of  one  of  the  native  women  and 
her  intelligent  application  of  the  teaching  at  Fort  Yukon, 
made  a  strong  impression  on  me.  Her  boy  of  six  or 
seven  had  suffered  a  terrible,  deep  cut  from  the  middle 
of  the  nose  down  to  and  through  the  upper  lip  right 
to  the  bone  a  few  days  before  by  running  within  the 
swing  of  his  father's  axe.    It  was  God's  mercy  that  the 

*  Since  writing  the  above  the  gloomy  forecast  it  contains  has  been  fully 
realized.  The  operation  of  the  cannery  in  the  summer  of  1919,  caused 
an  almost  complete  failure  in  the  native  fishing  and  the  natives  in  certain 
parts  have  already  had  to  kill  their  dogs  and  are  facing  a  winter  of  priva- 
tion.   November,  1919. 


PROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        17 

child's  skull  was  not  cleft  in  twain  by  the  blow.  The 
woman  had  thoroughly  washed  the  wound,  had  pulled  one 
of  the  long  coarse  hairs  of  her  head,  had  boiled  it  and  a 
common  needle,  and  had  taken  fifteen  stitches  therewith 
in  the  wound.  I  had  the  bandage  removed  and  found 
the  wound  looking  perfectly  healthy,  its  edges  in  good 
apposition,  and  apparently  healing  ''by  first  intention.'* 
She  had  also  made  an  aseptic  dressing  by  boiling  some 
moss  and  then  thoroughly  drying  and  heating  it  in  the 
oven.  The  wound  will  leave  its  inevitable  conspicuous 
scar,  but,  I  think,  will  have  no  other  ill  result.  The  same 
resolute  and  sensible  woman,  when  in  Fort  Yukon  a  few 
months  before,  had  brought  the  same  boy  to  the  doctor 
(who  is  also  our  dentist)  with  two  decayed  milk  teeth. 
Pointing  out  the  teeth  that  were  giving  the  trouble  and 
wrapping  her  stalwart  arms  about  the  boy,  she  said, ' '  Me 
hold-um,  you  pull-um" — and  it  was  done.  Most  Indian 
mothers  refuse  to  constrain  a  child  to  a  dreaded  operation 
of  any  kind,  for  which  refusal  "He  no  like"  is  held  suffi- 
cient reason.  The  use  of  cereals,  or  perhaps  sweets,  at 
any  rate  the  departure  from  a  predominantly  if  not  ex- 
clusively carnivorous  habit,  seems  to  be  introducing  de- 
cay of  the  teeth  amongst  our  native  children,  and  our  doc- 
tor has  to  resort  to  rewards,  and  to  the  arousing  of  emu- 
lation in  fortitude,  that  he  may  remove  teeth  that  befoul 
and  infect  the  children's  mouths. 

We  lay  long,  and  had  no  more  than  breakfasted  when 
it  was  church  time,  and  the  afternoon  slipped  rapidly 
away  while  Walter  read  aloud  to  me  from  the  Maccabees. 
Having  read  the  greater  part  of  the  Bible  aloud  to  me  in 
previous  years,  I  had  chosen  the  Apocrypha  for  the  win- 
ter's Sunday  reading,  and,  since  it  is  strangely  omitted 
from  most  Bibles,  had  brought  it  along  in  an  additional 
slim  India-paper  volume.  I  was  again  struck  by  the 
vigour  and  restraint  of  the  narrative,  equal  to  any  other 
of  the  sacred  narratives,  and  superior  to  many.  Of 
Antiochus  Epiphanes  the  author  writes  "He  spoke  very 
proud  words  and  made    a  great    massacre."     Walter 


18  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

looked  up  and  said  ''That  would  do  for  the  Kaiser.'*  I 
have  thought  of  the  verse  in  that  connection  many  times 
since,  and  I  know  not  where  else  in  literature  so  curt  yet 
adequate  a  characterization  of  William  II  of  Germany 
may  be  found.  I  submit  it  for  his  epitaph:  ''He  spoke 
very  proud  words  and  made  a  great  massacre."  What 
a  record ! 

I  was  amused  and  interested  at  hearing  some  instruc- 
tion and  reproof  administered  by  Walter  to  Paul,  the 
Indian  boy  I  had  brought  along.  Paul  was  an  adopted 
boy,  and  like  most  such  amongst  the  Indians  had  been 
worked  pretty  hard  and  given  little  chance  for  schooling. 
"Say  'yes,  please,'  "  said  Walter,  and  waited  till  he 
said  it;  "Say  'no,  thank  you;'  now  say  it  again."  "Say 
'yes,  sir,'  'no,  sir,'  and  remember  to  say  those  things  all 
the  time."  The  boy  was  already  beginning  to  exhibit 
an  almost  dog-like  fidelity  and  docility  to  Walter,  who 
never  failed  to  win  a  native  attendant. 

Another  Indian  service  by  candlelight,  when  the  brief 
day  had  closed  down,  brought  supper  time  and  bed.  Be- 
cause there  was  no  trail  at  all  above  this  place  and  much 
overflow  water  to  be  expected  on  the  river  and  we  were 
pressed  for  time,  I  made  an  arrangement  with  one  of  the 
Chandelar  men  to  accompany  us  for  a  couple  of  marches. 
So  we  set  out  early  on  Monday  morning  (I  cannot  say 
"bright  and  early,"  for  it  was  pitch  dark)  three  teams 
and  four  men  strong,  and  made  that  day  an  excellent 
run  on  the  Chandelar  ice.  Most  of  the  overflowed  water 
we  were  able  to  avoid,  but  one  slough  that  we  had  taken 
for  a  short-cut  was  completely  covered  with  an  inch  or 
two  of  running  water.  The  dogs  could  have  been  forced 
to  go  through  it,  though  at  20  degrees  below  zero  one 
does  not  wet  their  feet  unnecessarily,  but  the  loads  in  the 
toboggans  would  probably  be  wetted  and  the  toboggans 
themselves  encrusted  with  ice.  Here  came  the  utility  of 
the  large  sled,  its  bottom  raised  four  inches  or  so  above 
the  runners.  My  large  toboggan  was  lifted  up  and  set 
bodily  on  top  of  the  sled,  and  Jim's  little  toboggan  set 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   19 

bodily  on  top  of  that ;  the  dogs  were  turned  loose  to  clam- 
ber up  the  steep  bank  and  make  their  way  around  the 
water  in  company  with  the  two  Indians,  and  Walter  and 
I,  who  were  dry-shod  with  Eskimo  water-boots,  seized 
the  tow-line  of  the  sled  and  drew  the  whole  top-heavy 
load  easily  enough  through  the  hundred  yards  or  so  of 
water  that  was  running  over  the  smooth  ice.    It  was  done 
in  a  few  minutes ;  it  would  have  taken  an  hour  or  more 
to  break  out  a  practicable  trail  for  the  sleds  through  the 
thick  brush  of  the  bank;  and  to  have  driven  through  it 
would  have  risked  wetting  our  toboggan  loads.    The  be- 
ginning of  a  fight  amongst  the  dogs,  loose    from    one 
another  but  still  in  their  individual  harness,  was  quickly 
suppressed  with  a  heavy  whip  (there  is  no  use  in  stand- 
ing on  ceremony  when  dogs  are  fighting),  the  animals 
quickly  hitched  up  again,  and  we  passed  on  through  the 
Chandelar  Gap  in  perfectly  still  weather  to  the  cabin  at 
the  mouth  of  the  East  Fork.    I  am  not  sure  if  it  be  nine 
or  ten  times  that  I  have  passed  through  that  gap  in  the 
winter  coming  or  going,  but  this  is  only  the  second  time 
that  I  have  passed  through  it  without  a  gale  of  wind 
blowing.     Commonly,  although  it  be  dead  calm  a  few 
miles  above  and  a  few  miles  below,  the  wind  sweeps 
cruelly  between  its  narrow  jaws  and  the  ice  is  bare  and 
polished  however  deep  the  snow  may  lie  elsewhere. 

I  remember  that  Walter  wanted  to  go  on  to  the  long- 
abandoned  Chandelar  store  ten  miles  or  so  further,  and 
had  I  yielded  to  his  wish  it  would  have  saved  us  from  a 
notable  vexation  and  delay  later,  but  I  was  still  solicitous 
that  he  be  not  over-fatigued.  Seven  and  a  half  hours' 
good  ice  travel  the  next  day  brought  us  to  Caro,  the 
abandoned  mining  town  of  the  days  of  the  Chandelar 
stampede,  though  several  cabins  are  still  kept  up  by  men 
who  have  claims  of  some  value  on  distant  creeks,  in  one 
of  which  we  were  comfortably  lodged.  A  few  miles  be- 
fore reaching  Caro  we  passed  the  recent  tracks  of  a  herd 
of  caribou  and  the  dogs  were  wildly  excited.  Jim  said 
he  had  never  known  the  caribou  to  come  so  far  down  the 


20  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Chandelar  river  before,  and  this  is  one  of  many  indica- 
tions that  big  game  is  increasing  in  this  part  of  Alaska. 
A  little  further  on  Jim  got  a  useless  far-away  shot  at  one, 
but  there  is  no  restraining  an  Indian  with  a  gun  in  his 
hand  and  game  in  sight. 

So  far  our  travel  upon  the  Chandelar  had  justified  my 
expectation  of  good  early  going  on  the  ice.  Our  course 
lay  yet  on  the  river  for  a  day's  march,  but  now  we  had  a 
trail  made  by  two  young  men  who  had  been  working  on 
one  of  the  creeks  referred  to.  It  was  an  unexpected 
piece  of  good  fortune  to  find  a  trail  in  these  parts  so  early 
in  the  season.  They  were  Eskimos,  and  we  had  heard  that 
they  were  intending  to  go  across  country  to  Point  Barrow 
by  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Colville  river,  in  quest  of 
wives.  Not  many  natives  will  apply  themselves  steadily 
to  a  white  man's  occupation  as  these  two  youths  had 
applied  themselves  to  gold  mining,  but  one  was  mission- 
bred  at  the  AUakaket,  and,  I  am  afraid,  to  some  extent 
spoiled  for  native  vocations.  At  any  rate,  he  and  his 
partner  had  worked  a  claim  on  shares  for  two  years  and 
were  sufficiently  well  ahead  to  permit  them  to  spend  the 
winter  in  a  journey  to  the  coast.  Having  their  trail  as 
far  as  Coldfoot,  and  finding  such  good  travel  on  the 
Chandelar,  I  dismissed  Jim,  who  had  been  of  much  service 
to  us,  and  who  was  anxious  to  go  after  the  caribou  on  his 
way  home. 

The  trail  which  had  left  the  ice  only  to  reach  the  cabins 
at  Caro,  returned  immediately  to  it,  and  the  tracks  of  the 
Eskimo  boys'  sleds  were  plain.  But  there  was  another 
trail  leading  out  of  Caro  over  a  twenty-mile  portage  to 
another  fork  of  the  Chandelar,  on  its  way  to  the  distant 
creeks  referred  to,  by  which  the  boys  had  come.  Early 
in  the  morning,  having  paid  Jim  and  bidden  him  good- 
bye, I  started  ahead  of  the  teams  as  usual.  For  two  and 
a  half  hours  I  kept  a  steady  pace  and  must  have  gone 
ten  miles,  but  to  my  surprise  the  teams  did  not  catch  me 
up  although  the  going  was  excellent.  The  weather  was 
mild  when  I  started,  about  at  zero  and  overcast,  and  as 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   21 

the  morning  advanced  it  grew  milder  and  a  light  snow 
began  to  fall.    I  stopped  and  sat  down  and  waited  for  my 
party  a  full  half  hour.    Listening  intently  one  can  always 
hear  distant  sled-bells;  I  know  no  more  persistent  illu- 
sion of  the  trail;  but  unless  they  gradually  grow  louder 
until  there  remains  no  doubt,  it  is  a  mere  trick  of  the  ear. 
Puzzled  and  anxious  I  turned  back,  casting  in  my  mind 
what  could  have  kept  the  boys.    I  thought  of  the  portage 
trail,  but  dismissed  it  at  once,  for  I  knew  that  Walter 
knew  that  the  trail  was  on  the  river.    What  seemed  the 
most  likely  hypothesis  was  that  after  my  departure  the 
herd  of  caribou,  upon  the  skirts  of  which  we  had  pressed 
yesterday,  had  come  streaming  through  Caro  in  their 
usual  foolish  way  and  that  Walter  had  been  unable  to  re- 
sist the  temptation.    Yet  I  had  heard  no  shots.    Then  I 
thought  that  Paul,  who  had  shown  signs  of  wishing  to  re- 
turn with  Jim,  had  deserted  Walter  and  left  him  with  no 
one  to  handle  the  toboggan — but  again  that  would  have 
been  no  cause  for  detention ;  Walter  would  have  thrown 
both  teams  together  and  trailed  the  toboggan  behind  the 
sled.    As  I  approached  Caro  I  looked  eagerly  for  smoke 
from  the  cabin  we  had  stayed  in,  but  saw  none,  and  when 
I  reached  the  place  it  was  deserted.    What  had  happened 
to  my  companions  and  my  teams  ?    About  an  inch  of  snow 
had  fallen  since  I  left,  but  careful  examination  in  the 
dusk  (for  it  was  heavily  overcast)  showed  me  that  for 
some  inscrutable  reason  the  teams  had  passed  up  the 
portage  trail  and  had  not  taken  the  river  at  all.    Then 
I  did  as  stupid  a  thing  as  I  ever  did  in  my  life.    I  should 
have  stayed  at  Caro.    There  was  a  cabin  and  a  stove  and 
plenty  of  wood,  and  I  might  have  known  that  whatever 
the  cause  of  the  mistake  Walter  would  have  returned  to 
Caro  for  me  as  soon  as  he  found  it  out.    Instead  of  which 
I  started  up  the  portage  trail  following  my  teams.    This 
trail  was  most  horribly  rough.    There  had  been  but  one 
previous    passage   this    season;    there    was    not    snow 
enough  to  cover  the  niggerheads,  and  as  it  grew  dark  I 
was  stumbling  and  slipping  at  every  step.   For  full  three 


22  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

hours  I  pushed  on,  intent  upon  catching  up  with  my 
teams,  until  it  was  utterly  dark  and  I  could  go  no  further. 
I  stopped  in  the  midst  of  some  small  burned-over  timber 
— mere  poles — and  managed  to  pull  down  enough  with 
my  hands  to  start  a  fire.  I  had  a  cake  of  milk  chocolate 
in  my  pocket,  a  bunch  of  sulphur  matches,  and  a  few 
pipefuls  of  tobacco,  and  I  commenced  a  vigil  that  I 
thought  would  last  till  morning — fully  aware  now  of  my 
mistake  and  resolved  to  return  to  Caro  at  break  of  day. 
Half  my  time  was  occupied  in  breaking  down  poles  to 
supply  the  fire,  and  the  elasticity  of  these  half -burned 
slender  sticks  is  remarkable ;  they  could  be  pulled  almost 
to  the  ground  without  breaking.  I  had  walked,  I  suppose, 
twenty-five  or  thirty  miles,  had  had  no  lunch  and  would 
have  no  supper,  but  fortunately  it  was  mild  weather.  I 
had  now  ample  leisure  for  chagrin  that  after  all  my  many 
years'  experience  on  the  trail  I  should  have  had  such  poor 
judgment  in  a  quandary.  I  dozed  a  little,  squatting  by 
the  fire,  until  it  was  time  to  get  more  sticks,  and  I  thought 
of  an  old  Tanana  Indian,  Alexander  of  Tolovana,  who 
had  been  suddenly  paralyzed  while  out  hunting  in  the 
previous  January  and  had  fallen  across  his  camp  fire 
and  severely  burned  himself.  It  was  during  an  unusually 
mild  spell  of  weather  and  he  lay  for  six  days  unable  to 
do  more  than  crawl  around  and  painfully  pick  up  little 
sticks  to  keep  his  fire  going.  He  told  me  ''all  the  time 
I  prayed  God,  don't  let  it  get  cold,"  and  it  did  not  get 
cold  again  until  a  search  party  had  discovered  him  and 
brought  him  home;  then  it  went  to  fifty  below  zero  the 
next  day. 

About  8.30  I  thought  I  heard  the  sound  of  bells,  but  I 
had  been  hearing  them  all  day.  Presently,  however,  they 
were  unmistakable,  and  I  knew  that  Walter  was  at  hand. 
He  had  brought  some  grub  and  a  thermos  bottle  of  soup 
and  a  robe  in  the  empty  sled,  and  I  was  never  gladder 
to  see  anyone  in  my  life.  Strange  as  it  seemed  to  me 
then,  and  seems  to  me  now,  he  had  blundered  as  badly  as 
I  had.    Starting  in  the  pitch  dark,  with  heavily  overcast 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   23 

sky,  he  had  not  noticed  particularly  the  route  his  leader 
took,  but  supposed  that  the  trail  would  strike  the  river 
when  it  had  wound  around  the  cabins  sufficiently,  and 
when  it  had  quite  left  the  town,  supposed  it  was  but 
avoiding  bad  ice  or  open  water  and  expected  every  min- 
ute that  it  would  strike  to  the  river.  When  at  length 
fully  awake  to  his  blunder,  he  did  not  turn  round  to  re- 
trace his  course,  and  that  was  his  second  blunder;  the 
trail  was  so  narrow  that  he  would  have  had  to  clear  a 
space  to  turn  in  with  the  axe,  and  he  thought  he  could 
reach  the  river  quicker  by  striking  across  country  to  it. 
But  this  involved  him  in  unexpected  difficulties  of  dense 
brush  and  steep  gullies.  He  had  to  make  wide  detours, 
and  it  was  a  long  time  ere  he  reached  a  slough,  hidden 
by  an  island  from  view  of  the  main  river,  and  the  bank 
so  high  and  steep  that  the  sleds  had  to  be  lowered  by 
ropes.  Eunning  round  the  island  to  the  main  river  he 
saw  my  tracks,  both  going  and  returning,  and  made  quick 
camp.  Then,  leaving  Paul  in  camp,  he  took  the  dogs  and 
empty  sled  and  returned  to  Caro,  only  to  find  that  I  had 
gone  up  the  portage  trail.  Even  though  it  was  nearly 
dark  and  snow  had  fallen  I  should  have  noticed  the  place 
where  the  sleds  left  the  portage  trail  and  cut  across 
country — and  that  was  another  blunder  to  my  discredit. 

It  was  eleven  at  night  when  we  were  safely  at  camp, 
and  one  in  the  morning  when  we  had  eaten  supper  and 
turned  in  (though  this  was  one  of  the  few  nights  of  the 
whole  winter  when  we  did  not  read  at  all),  and  since  we 
did  not  arise  till  eight  and  were  not  started  again  till 
eleven,  here  was  a  day  and  a  half  of  our  precious  early 
season  wasted,  and  snow  heavily  threatening.  I  had  no 
reproaches  for  Walter  and  he  none  for  me;  each  knew 
himself  also  vulnerable — and  beside,  what  was  the  use? 
My  chief  feeling  was  of  gratitude  to  him  for  hunting  me 
up  and  saving  me  from  a  hungry,  cheerless  night.  Had 
we  passed  by  the  East  Fork  cabins  and  pushed  on  to  the 
old  store,  as  Walter  wanted  to,  we  should  have  passed 
Caro  by  daylight,  and  this  series  of  blunders  would  have 


24  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

been  impossible.  But  you  never  can  tell.  One  thing  I 
was  really  resolved  upon — ^not  to  get  out  of  sight  of  my 
teams  any  more ! 

Three  hours  brought  us  to  the  mouth  of  the  West  Fork, 
to  a  cabin  occupied  by  the  parents  and  grandparents  of 
one  of  the  Eskimo  boys  referred  to,  where  also  were  two 
other  Eskimo  men  just  returned  from  hunting,  and  they 
had  fifteen  or  twenty  caribou  carcases  piled  high  on  a 
cache.  They  gave  us  fresh  meat  for  our  dogs,  a  welcome 
and  highly  appreciated  change,  and  we  pushed  on  up  the 
tortuous  West  Fork  until  dusk  and  then  camped  on  its 
bank.  The  next  day  for  some  twenty  miles  we  still  pur- 
sued this  stream,  grown  so  crooked  that  I  doubt  if  two 
miles  travel  gave  one  mile  advance,  and  troubled,  as 
usual  here,  with  frequent  and  extensive  overflow  water. 
But  the  thermometer  stood  well  above  zero  and  Walter 
and  I,  in  our  waterboots,  went  right  through  it,  Paul,  who 
was  in  moccasins,  perching  upon  the  sled.  Thus  dry- 
shod,  and  in  moderate  weather  when  ice  does  not  rapidly 
collect,  overflow  water,  if  it  be  not  too  deep,  offers  no 
impediment  to  travel,  for  the  ice  is  always  smooth  under- 
neath. Although  the  water  obliterated  the  tracks  we 
were  following,  whenever  we  came  to  ice  that  had  not 
been  inundated  we  found  them  again. 

At  last  we  reached  the  place  where  the  trail  ''takes 
up"  the  bank  to  cross  from  Chandelar  to  Koyukuk 
water,  and  the  chief  advantage  of  having  a  trail  to 
follow  was  that  it  led  us  directly  to  this  spot,  with  no 
necessity  of  casting  hither  and  thither  to  find  it.  A 
grinding  ascent  of  a  very  steep  ridge  brought  us  to  the 
open  country  and  to  twenty  or  thirty  miles  of  very 
rough  travel.  The  lightness  of  the  early  snowfall  which 
had  given  us  such  quick  passage  of  the  rivers  was  now 
no  small  disadvantage.  Heavy  snow  fills  up  and  smooths 
out  the  inequalities  of  the  surface,  but  a  few  inches  has 
little  effect.  Our  sled  suffered  considerably  and  our 
progress  was  slow.  Here,  as  well  as  in  deep,  loose  snow, 
the  toboggan  fares  better;  with  its  flat  bottom  it  slips 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        25 

and  slides  amongst  the  hillocks  of  the  niggerheads,  suf- 
fers an  overturn  with  no  jar  or  damage,  and  is  easily 
righted,  while  the  sled,  high  on  the  benches  of  its  runners, 
falls  with  a  crash  and  is  righted  with  labour.  By  dark 
we  were  at  a  rest  cabin  and  camped,  and  after  another 
day  of  banging  and  slamming  over  the  niggerheads  of 
the  South  Fork  Flats,  had  crossed  that  branch  of  the 
Koyukuk,  disdaining  the  cabin  at  the  crossing,  and  had 
pushed  on  up  Boulder  Creek  towards  Coldfoot  on  the 
Middle  Fork,  making  a  camp  in  complete  darkness,  with 
the  weather  grown  decidedly  cold  again.  Few  more  beau- 
tiful winter  scenes  could  be  imagined  than  that  which 
had  gladdened  my  eyes  all  the  evening.  The  mountains 
at  the  head  of  the  South  Fork  are  finely  sculptured 
sharp  peaks,  forming  a  crescent.  Their  tops  gave  us  the 
sun  long  after  his  brief  visit  to  the  valley,  and  when  the 
alpine  glow  faded  and  died  there  came  out  one  brilliant 
star  right  over  the  point  of  the  middle  peak  and  there 
hung  and  glittered. 

Paul,  who  had  overcome  his  desire  to  return,  which 
was  prompted  merely  by  Jim's  return,  and  had  grown 
marvellously  and  anxiously  polite,  now  expressed  his 
determination  to  "go  all  the  way"  with  us.  **I  see 
Husky  country  too;  I  go  all  the  way — please.  Sir?"  he 
said  repeatedly  of  late.  Both  Walter  and  I  had  taken 
to  the  boy,  who  was  willing  and  good-natured  and  very 
teachable,  and  I  should  have  liked  to  keep  him,  but  it 
was  out  of  the  question.  From  time  to  time  I  expected  to 
add  a  third  to  our  party,  but  it  would  be  one  with  local 
knowledge  and  speech;  Paul  would  be  but  an  additional 
expense,  he  would  be  out  of  his  language  range  when  he 
reached  Coldfoot. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  but  we  had  wasted  this 
week's  day  of  rest  and  it  was  no  more  than  half  a  journey 
into  Coldfoot,  so  we  broke  up  another  camp  where  we 
had  been  snug  and  comfortable  at  forty  below  zero  and 
passed  up  to  the  lakes  of  the  low  ''summit"  and  do\^^l 
Slate  Creek  to  Coldfoot.    My  old  friend  who  had  been 


26  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

working  on  an  ''hydraulic  proposition"  at  the  head  of 
Slate  Creek  ever  since  I  knew  this  country,  was  gone 
somewhere  else,  "working  for  wages,"  which  means 
earning  a  little  more  money  with  which  to  pursue  his 
special  project.  Some  day  he  will  finish  his  ditch  and 
bring  the  water  down  from  the  lakes  and  I  trust  that  then 
he  will  wash  out  gold  enough  to  make  his  fortune.  But 
however  large  a  stake  he  may  make  I  doubt  he  will  never 
be  as  happy  as  in  his  cabin  at  the  head  of  Slate  Creek. 

The  first  winter  mail  had  not  yet  come  and  the  camp 
was  without  news  of  the  war  since  the  last  steamboat, 
so  that  we  were  eagerly  questioned  as  soon  as  we  arrived. 
Our  news  was  bad  news — the  overwhelming  of  the 
Italians  by  the  Austrians  and  Germans  and  the  increased 
destructiveness  of  submarines. 

After  many  camps,  however  comfortable,  a  roadhouse 
is  welcome,  but  there  was  much  to  do  if  we  were  to 
start  down  the  Koyukuk  in  the  morning.  My  customary 
visits  to  the  men  on  the  creeks  were  given  up  this  year, 
or  Christmas  at  Point  Hope  would  have  been  out  of  the 
question,  but  there  was  ser\^ce  to  hold  and,  as  I  learned, 
a  baptism  to  perform.  Our  supplies  had  to  be  replen- 
ished and  Paul  to  be  equipped  for  his  return.  A  little, 
rude,  discarded  toboggan  we  had  picked  up  at  one  of  our 
stopping  places  and  had  brought  along  on  top  of  our 
sled.  This  would  hold  his  blankets,  his  grub  and  dog- 
feed,  and  two  stout  dogs  that  we  had  brought  for  this 
purpose  would  haul  it  without  difficulty.  With  this  rig 
he  could  almost  certainly  make  a  cabin  every  night 
whatever  the  weather  and  should  be  back  at  the  Chan- 
delar  village  in  five  or  six  days. 

I  was  rejoiced  to  realize  that  Walter  was  entirely  him- 
self again.  Upon  the  scales  at  the  store  he  weighed  as 
much  as  he  did  before  his  sickness  and  I  dismissed  all 
anxiety  about  his  condition. 

When  I  stepped  out  that  night  before  going  to  bed  I 
thought  again  that  Coldfoot  is  one  of  the  most  pictur- 
esquely situated  places  I  know.    The  little  squat  snow- 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       27 

covered  cabins  were  mostly  dark  and  uninhabited,  but 
the  sharp  white  peaks  around  it  glistened  in  the  clear 
starlit  night,  a  splendid  aurora  wreathed  and  twisted 
itself  about  them,  gleaming  with  soft  opalescent  greens 
and  yellows,  and  a  keen  wind  was  blowing.  Just  so  had  I 
seen  the  place  thirteen  years  before,  on  my  first  visit, 
and  the  occasion  came  vividly  back  to  me.  The  glistening 
peaks  are  outlying  spurs  of  the  mountains  of  the  Arctic 
divide,  the  Endicotts,  beyond  which  I  had  never  hitherto 
penetrated.  On  this  journey  we  hoped  to  flank  them  at 
their  termination  on  the  sea  coast  and  afterwards  to  pass 
eastward  along  their  northern  aspect  as  now  we  should 
pass  for  awhile  westward  along  their  southern. 

So  far  our  progress  on  the  whole  had  been  good;  the 
Koyukuk  river  stretched  before  us  with  no  more  snow 
upon  it  than  the  Chandelar  had;  two  days  of  such  ice- 
travel  should  take  us  to  Settles  and  two  more  to  the 
Allakaket,  and  I  should  be  ahead  of  my  schedule. 

A  day's  rest  I  had  thought  would  not  hurt  Paul  and 
I  had  settled  with  the  roadhouse  keeper  before  going 
to  bed  with  such  day  included,  but  upon  arising  Paul 
decided  to  return  at  once.  He  was  too  shy,  I  think,  to 
relish  remaining  with  strangers  in  our  absence,  and  was 
packed  up  and  gone,  with  his  modest  equipage,  before  we 
left;  a  willing  useful  boy  with  a  broad  happy  grin  and 
one  that  I  wish  might  have  had  more  chance. 

So  Walter  with  six  dogs  and  the  sled,  I  with  four  and 
the  toboggan — we  launched  upon  the  smooth  ice  of  the 
river  and  made  fine  time  for  ten  or  twelve  miles,  a  wind 
almost  behind  us,  charged  with  drifting  snow,  urging  us 
onward.  Then  we  began  to  be  troubled  with  overflow 
water  and  had  much  to  do  passing  the  Twelve-mile  creek 
mouth  where  the  river  ice  suffers  successive  inundations 
all  the  winter  long.  Should  one  reach  these  stretches 
just  at  the  time  when  the  cold  has  re-consolidated  the 
surface,  there  is  swift  going  with  a  wind  behind;  the  dogs 
have  no  work  to  do  at  all.  But  at  any  of  the  intermediate 
stages,  either  of  running  water  or  of  half -formed  or  thin 


28  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ice,  one  is  detained  and  bothered.  Sometimes  by  keeping 
along  the  edge  of  the  overflow  and  making  wide  detours 
one  may  stay  upon  solid  footing,  but  at  others  there  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  plunge  right  through.  In  such 
aqueous  passages  in  cold  weather  a  toboggan  is  a  nui- 
sance; the  water  freezes  on  the  bottom  and  along  the 
edges  until  presently  so  much  ice  has  accumulated  that  its 
progress  is  retarded.  Then  it  must  be  upturned  and  the 
ice  beaten  off  with  the  flat  of  the  axe.  It  is  not  easy  to 
remove  it  all,  yet  a  little  adherent  ice  doubles  the  labour 
of  hauling  when  snow  is  reached  again;  and  when  the 
process  must  be  repeated  every  mile  or  so  much  time 
and  effort  are  consumed.  The  Koyukuk  river  in  the 
region  of  the  ''canon"  consists  of  a  bend  of  wind-cleared 
or  overflowed  ice  followed  by  a  bend  of  snow-covered 
ice,  and  this  alternation  keeps  up  for  many  miles.  At 
last,  as  it  grew  dusk,  we  emerged  from  the  narrow  wind- 
ings of  the  caiion  region  and  were  out  upon  the  broad 
river  again,  and  by  dark  were  at  the  roadhouse  halfway 
to  Bettles. 

Our  host,  who  passed  by  the  name  of  *'the  Dynamite 
Dutchman,"  was  not  the  owner  of  the  house  and  had 
few  claims  to  be  considered  a  professional  victualler.  I 
do  not  think  his  nickname  hinted  at  plots  against  muni- 
tion works  or  shipyards,  but  rather  at  some  ludicrous 
incident  connected  with  quartz  mining.  Wherever  his 
sympathies  lay,  he,  like  most  Teutons  in  Alaska,  I  think, 
had  heeded  the  warning — possibly  the  more  effective  for 
its  crudeness — set  up  at  every  post-office  in  the  land,  to 
''keep  his  mouth  shut"  about  the  war,  though  loquacious 
enough  in  his  broken  and  sometimes  puzzling  English  on 
every  other  subject. 

Crowded  into  this  roadhouse  were  two  horse-freighters, 
bringing  miners '  supplies  from  Bettles,  the  head  of  navi- 
gation, and  two  dog-mushers,  so  that  paucity  of  accom- 
modation was  added  to  indifference  of  table  and  the  usual 
dirt  and  neglect.  Some  few  years  ago  a  land  trail  was 
cut  from  Bettles  to  Coldfoot  which  avoids  this  part  of 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        29 

the  river  altogether,  and  so  soon  as  there  is  depth  of 
snow  enough  for  overland  travel  the  river  trail  is  aban- 
doned. So  there  is  really  no  incentive  to  anyone  to  take 
much  pains  with  this  house. 

We  awoke  next  morning  to  changed  conditions ;  two  or 
three  inches  of  new  snow  lay  on  the  earth.  And  all  day 
long  it  snowed  and  a  drifting  wind  filled  up  the  trail  and 
sledding  grew  heavier  and  heavier.  The  toboggan  be- 
came such  a  drag  in  the  wet  snow  from  the  remains  of 
yesterday 's  ice,  lingering  notwithstanding  repeated  beat- 
ings, that  by  and  by  we  set  it  bodily  on  top  of  the  sled 
and  hitched  the  ten  dogs  to  the  double  load  with  advan- 
tage. It  took  us  five  hours  to  make  the  eighteen  miles 
to  the  next  roadhouse,  and  here  we  stayed  for  lunch  and 
took  the  toboggan  into  the  house  and  thawed  off  the  ice 
in  front  of  the  stove. 

Here  we  foregathered  with  an  old-timer  from  the  pre- 
Klondike  days — ^there  remain  such  yet  in  Alaska,  but 
they  grow  very  few — ^who  knew  Walter 's  father,  the  first 
white  man  who  ever  came  to  the  Yukon  seeking  gold, 
and  who  spoke  highly  and  interestingly  of  him.  It 
always  gave  me  pleasure  that  the  boy  should  hear  his 
father  spoken  well  of — and  indeed  I  have  heard  no  one 
speak  ill  of  him.  Ogilvie  in  his  Early  Days  on  the 
Yukon  has  much  to  say  of  Arthur  Harper  and  his 
partners,  McQueston  and  Mayo.  He  died  in  1897  when 
Walter  was  only  five  years  old. 

It  had  been  wiser,  I  suppose,  to  have  spent  the  night 
here,  but  we  were  resolved  to  reach  Bettles  if  possible, 
another  eighteen  or  twenty  miles  away,  and  had  already 
lingered  longer  than  we  should  have  done.  Then  began 
a  dismal  grind  of  seven  hours.  The  day  passed  and  it 
grew  dark  and  the  wind  arose  again.  Soon  it  became  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  to  detect  the  trail  at  all,  yet,  with  the 
increasing  snow,  increasingly  important.  With  a  candle 
in  a  tin  can — the  best  trail  light  all  things  considered — 
Walter  was  ahead  peering  and  feeling  for  it  for  hours 
while  I  brought  both  loads  along ;  starting  one  and  then 


30  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

going  back  and  starting  the  other  when  he  gave  the  word 
to  advance.  Thus  we  plodded  until  we  were  encouraged 
by  catching  the  loom  of  the  cliffs  below  the  John  river 
mouth  and  knew  that  we  were  within  a  few  miles  of 
Bettles.  In  another  hour  dogs  and  men  alike  revived 
at  the  distant  twinkling  lights,  and  shortly  thereafter  we 
were  at  the  roadhouse,  the  heaviest  day's  travel,  so  far, 
of  the  journey  behind  us.  It  was  too  heavy;  dogs  and 
men  were  weary ;  and  I  resolved  to  lie  here  a  day.  With 
the  late  start  that  so  late  arrival  would  permit  we  should 
not  reach  the  Allakaket  over  the  trails  that  lay  before 
us  in  two  days  travel;  with  a  day's  rest  and  an  early 
start  we  might  do  it. 

So  we  spent  a  quiet  day  of  refreshment  at  Bettles. 
Some  supplies  to  be  procured,  some  repairs  to  make  to 
the  sled,  service  for  the  few  whites,  and  for  the  Kobuk 
Eskimos  (attracted  to  this  undesirable  place  of  residence 
by  the  employment  in  freighting  with  dog-teams  which 
it  affords),  occupied  the  day,  which  had  its  chief  interest 
in  the  presence  in  the  town  of  two  families  of  northern 
Eskimo  newly  come  across  from  a  tributary  of  the  Col- 
ville  river  to  purchase  ammunition  and  grub,  who  were 
never  here  before,  or  at  any  other  post  of  white  men  in 
their  lives,  save  once,  a  long  time  ago,  at  Point  Barrow ; 
and  who  were  all  unbaptized.  It  was  not  until  the  eve- 
ning that  I  discovered  them  and  I  did  my  best  to  persuade 
them  to  accompany  us  to  the  Allakaket,  where  they  could 
be  instructed,  offering  them  the  hospitality  of  the  mis- 
sion. But  I  did  not  succeed;  there  were  those  who 
awaited  their  return;  and  I  had  to  content  myself  with 
such  primary  instruction  as  I  could  give  them,  with  un- 
practiced  interpretation  (for  their  speech  differs  a  little 
from  the  Kobuk  vernacular  of  my  interpreter)  on  this 
one  occasion.  Their  presence  whetted  my  appetite  for 
our  northern  journey. 

Walter  and  I  had  an  hour  also,  in  the  afternoon, 
wherein  we  finished  the  first  reading  of  Hamlet.  It  was 
characteristic  of  his  delicacy  of  mind  that  he  should  have 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       31 

revolted  at  the  occasional  grossness  which  Shakespeare 
admits.     ''They  say  the  Indian  stories  are  vulgar,  but 
there's  nothing  in  any  Indian  story  I  ever  heard  more 
vulgar  than  that,"  said  he  with  reference  to  Hamlet's 
coarse  remarks  to  Ophelia  in  the  play  scene.    "Well,  for 
boys'  and  girls'  schools  they  have  editions  of  Shake- 
speare and  all  the  classic  writers  with  the  grossness  left 
out;  we  call  them  'Bowdlerized'  editions ;  but  there  comes 
a  time  when  one  prefers  to  have  what  an  author  wrote 
rather  than  what  someone  else  thinks  he  should  have 
written.     So  soon  as  a  man  is  prepared  to  make  first- 
hand acquaintance  with  literature  he  must  be  prepared 
to  read  things  that   offend  him."    "But,"   continued 
Walter,  "if  Hamlet  were  in  love  with  Ophelia  why  should 
he  insult  her  by  saying  things  like  that?"    "There  are 
a  great  many  puzzling  things  in  Hamlet,"  I  said,  "that 
scholars  and  critics  have  been  disputing  about  these  two 
hundred  years.   Was  Hamlet  in  love  with  Ophelia  or  only 
pretending?    Was  he  really  mad  or  only  feigning  mad- 
ness?    Then  you  must  remember  that  three  centuries 
ago  gentlemen  jested  with  ladies  about  things  that  would 
never  be  referred  to  in  their  presence  nowadays  by  de- 
cent men."    I  did  not  trouble  him  with  the  theory  that 
Shakespeare  had  carelessly  transcribed  the  passage  from 
an  earlier  play  in  which  Ophelia  was  a  courtesan,  which 
raises  more  difficulties  than  it  solves.    The  subject  came 
up  again  and  again  as  we  ranged  through  the  plays. 
Othello  was  read  once  only;  I  could  not  bring  Walter  to  a 
re-reading   because    lago's    continual  ribaldry  and  ob- 
scenity were  so  offensive  to  him.    "But  don't  you  see 
that  Shakespeare  is  making  lago  paint  his  own  picture 
by  what  he  puts  in  his  mouth?    Therein  lies  the  art  of  the 
dramatist;  we  are  nowhere  told  that  lago  is   a  low- 
minded  beast  who  believes  in  no  man's  honour  and  p.o 
woman's  virtue;  who  cares  for  no  one  but  himself  and 
will  use  any  base  weapon  for  his  own  advancement  and 
gratification — he  is  permitted  to  unfold  his  own  charac- 
ter solely  by  what  he  says,  and  that  makes  the  picture  a 


32  A  :WINTER  CIRCUIT 

thousand  times  more  life-like  and  convincing/'  "It's 
so  life-like,"  said  Walter,  "that  I  don't  want  to  see  or 
hear  any  more  of  him."  Yet  he  could  appreciate 
Othello's  fine  comparison  of  his  changeless  passion  for 
revenge  to  "the  Pontick  sea,  whose  icy  current  and  com- 
pulsive course  ne'er  feels  retiring  ebb,  but  keeps  due  on 
to  the  Propontick  and  the  Hellespont."  "And  that  is 
why,"  I  said,  "the  British  failed  to  force  the  Dardanelles 
and  take  Constantinople.  Had  there  been  ebb  and  flow  in 
its  waters  the  mines  set  afloat  by  the  Turks  would  not 
have  streamed  down  incessantly  upon  the  war-ships." 
We  went  thence  to  a  discussion  of  the  many  great  rivers 
received  by  the  Black  Sea  and  the  constant  outflowing 
current  they  gave  rise  to,  and  were  presently  comparing 
the  Black  Sea  with  Bering's  Sea,  and  the  Danube  with 
the  Yukon.  Thence  we  went  back  to  Constantinople  it- 
self, its  incomparably  strong  and  important  situation  and 
the  long,  long  series  of  momentous  events  that  have 
sprung  and  may  yet  spring  therefrom.  Thus  our  litera- 
ture lesson  would  become  a  geography  lesson  and  that 
would  develope  into  a  history  lesson,  illustrating  my 
favourite  theme  of  the  unity  of  all  knowledge.  * '  Except 
mathematics, ' '  said  Walter,  slyly.  ^ '  Except  mathematics 
and  a  great  many  other  things  so  far  as  I  am  concerned," 
I  answered,  "but  that  only  shows  my  limitations  and  does 
not  at  all  detract  from  the  truth  that  all  knowledge  is 
connected  and  is  essentially  one."  "Well,"  laughed 
Walter,  "  if  all  knowledge  is  connected,  what  is  the 
connection,  for  instance,  between  Constantinople  and 
chemistry'?"  "Questions  like  that  are  not  always  easy 
to  answer,"  I  said,  "for  the  connection  is  not  always  on 
the  surface,  but  that  particular  question  is  dead  easy; 
Constantinople  was  preserved  from  the  Turks  for  cen- 
turies by  the  Greek  fire  and  fell  at  last  into  their  hands 
by  gunpowder."  And  that  recalled  to  him  the  Henty 
book  that  dealt  with  the  fall  of  Constantinople  and  he 
allowed  the  cogency  of  the  connection.  I  do  not  in  the 
least  remember  its  name  and  it  does  not  in  the  least 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   33 

matter ;  there  are  scores  of  them  and  they  are  not  litera- 
ture in  any  high  sense,  though  not  without  literary  merit ; 
but  they  served  an  excellent  good  purpose  for  Walter 
and  will  do  as  well  by  any  bright  boy.  What  pleased  me 
most  was  that  he  remembered  a.d.  1453. 

I  do  not  flatter  myself  that  the  ordinary  reader  will 
take  any  deep  interest  in  this  Sandford-and-Merton  busi- 
ness and  I  will  not  trouble  him  with  it  more,  though  my 
diary  of  this  journey  contains  many  notes  of  Walter's 
studies  and  progress,  but  it  illustrates  the  necessarily 
desultory  way  in  which  his  education  had  been  prose- 
cuted so  far  as  I  was  responsible  for  it,  snatching  an 
hour  here  and  there,  now  and  then,  but  resolved  to  let  no 
day  pass  without  doing  a  little  work.  He  wrote  a  diary 
as  regularly  as  I  did,  and  in  a  little  red  book  he  kept 
account  of  our  expenses;  for  I  had  turned  over  to  him 
before  we  started  all  the  money  I  had  provided  for  the 
journey  and  he  made  all  purchases  and  payments.  The 
practice  and  the  responsibility  I  thought  alike  desirable 
for  him. 

The  next  day  was  simply  a  long  heavy  grind  of  twelve 
hours  through  the  snow,  and  we  made  the  thirty  miles 
to  the  Indian  village  at  the  mouth  of  the  South  Fork, 
quite  exhausted,  long  after  dark,  having  started  long 
before  daylight.  The  trail  was  drifted  and  out  of  easy 
sight  and  we  had  to  seek  for  it  all  day  long.  But  that 
we  followed  a  fresh  track  from  a  fish  cache  for  the  last 
ten  miles  we  should  not  have  reached  the  village  at  all. 
An  old  nervous  trouble  in  my  shoulder  that  for  years  has 
accompanied  excessive  fatigue  was  so  alarmingly  acute 
that  I  began  to  doubt  if  I  could  stand  a  long  continuance 
of  such  travel.  Walter  rubbed  it  with  menthol  balm  for 
half  an  hour  and  the  pain  subsided  under  his  strong, 
gentle  hand  and  I  slept,  but  I  knew  that  it  would  return 
under  similar  circumstances,  and  since  this  attack  had 
been  worse  than  any  before,  there  was  no  telling  to  what 
exacerbation  it  might  rise. 

There  come  times  in  the  life  of  any  man  who  turns 


34  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

middle  age  when  he  realizes  with  surprise,  but  if  he  be  in 
any  way  a  wise  man,  with  resignation,  that  he  can  no 
longer  safely  do  the  things  he  used  to  do;  that  he  has 
no  longer  the  reserves  of  strength  and  endurance — no 
longer  the  quick  resilience  of  recuperation.  The  first  of 
such  occasions  came  to  me  when  I  was  climbing  Alaska's 
great  mountain  five  years  before,  and  I  put  away  thence- 
forward the  excessive  strain  of  great  altitudes ;  this  night 
was  the  second  sharp  reminder  and  I  realized  that  long 
winter  journeys  with  stress  of  weather  and  labour  would 
soon  also  be  things  of  the  past.  Meanwhile,  did  I  hope 
to  accomplish  the  project  immediately  before  me,  it  was 
clearly  my  business  to  relieve  myself  of  all  unnecessary 
fatigue  and  I  resolved  that  night  to  spare  no  assistance 
that  it  was  within  my  means  to  obtain.  Accordingly  next 
morning  I  procured  a  native  and  his  team  to  take  part 
of  our  load  and  accompany  us  the  remaining  thirty  miles 
to  the  Allakaket.  With  this  help  we  made  the  day's 
run,  tired  but  not  exhausted,  and  came  to  the  glad  wel- 
come and  care  and  refreshment  of  the  mission  at  dark. 

I  have  availed  myself  of  several  opportunities  in  pre- 
vious books  of  speaking  of  this  remote,  isolated  mission 
station  just  north  of  the  Arctic  Circle,  in  the  wilderness 
of  the  Koyukuk  country;  in  this  book  I  am  hastening  to 
the  Arctic  coast  and  am  perhaps  already  overlong  get- 
ting there ;  so  I  shall  say  no  more  than  that  the  Saturday 
and  Sunday  at  the  Allakaket  were  very  happy  days,  spent 
ministering  to  a  kindly,  docile  people  and  to  the  two 
gentlewomen,  a  teacher  and  a  nurse — the  only  white 
women,  I  suppose,  in  a  circuit  of  an  hundred  miles — who 
serve  them  with  such  devotion  and  success. 

Yet  while  four  or  five  hundred  miles  from  the  coast, 
we  were  already  among  the  Eskimos,  and  henceforth 
should  encounter  few  if  any  other  natives.  The  mission 
here  serves  both  Indians  and  Eskimos,  now  living  in  per- 
fect peace  and  friendship  together  after  ages  of  hostility 
and  distrust;  an  Indian  village  standing  on  one  side  of 
the  river  and  an  Eskimo  village  on  the  other,  and  the 


FROM  FOET  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   35 

rivers  by  which  we  should  pass  from  this  place,  out  of 
Koyukuk  waters  into  Arctic  Ocean  waters  and  down  to 
the  sea,  are  occupied  almost  entirely  by  scattered  inland 
Eskimos. 

An  enthusiastic  amateur  versifier,  who  does  me  the 
honour  to  say  that  his  productions  are  inspired  by  what 
I  have  written,  but  who  is  not  aware  of  the  syllables 
that  carry  the  accent  in  Alaskan  names,  sent  me  these 
lines : 

"Far  up  the  lone  Koyukuk, 
Oft  mantled  in  deep  snow, 
There  docile  folk  learn  daily 
The  things  they  ought  to  know." 

His  lines  reminded  me  of  the  gentleman  at  a  public 
dinner  in  New  York  who  said  to  me,  ''Haven't  you  a 
place  up  there  called  Nom-eT',  to  whom  I  was  not  quick 
enough  to  reply,  "  Yes,  that's  near  my  homy." 

We  were  fortunate  in  finding  that  two  of  our  mission- 
bred  Eskimo  boys  were  intending  a  journey  to  the  Kobuk 
on  a  visit  to  relatives,  and  I  made  arrangement  to  meet 
their  travelling  expenses  (which  means,  where  we  are 
now  come,  to  provide  the  food)  in  return  for  their  assist- 
ance on  the  trail ;  but  however  carefully  a  good  start  may 
be  planned  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  secure  it  when  na- 
tives are  included,  especially  should  Sunday  intervene. 
I  was  not  sorry  that  the  delay  on  Monday,  26th  Novem- 
ber, when  we  left  the  Allakaket,  allowed  me  an  hour  or 
two  in  the  schoolroom,  for  however  hurried  a  visit,  it  is 
incomplete  and  unsatisfactory  unless  it  include  the  work 
of  the  school,  but  I  was  annoyed  that  our  start  at  eleven 
in  the  morning  proved  a  false  start.  My  sled  and  tobog- 
gan had  been  taken  safely  down  the  steep  bank  to  the  ice 
of  the  river,  making  the  awkward  sharp  turn  of  the  trail 
just  as  soon  as  the  ice  was  reached,  but  Oola,  with  a  new 
large  sled,  well  loaded,  essaying  the  same,  his  dogs  hav- 
ing reached  the  bottom  and  made  the  turn,  the  sled 
caught  on  a  piece  of  rough  ice  and  the  jerk  of  the  chang- 


36  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ing  direction  was  strong  enough  to  break  all  the  benches 
on  one  side  of  the  sled  and  wreck  it  completely. 

Not  only  had  another  sled  to  be  procured  but  I  was 
called  upon  to  settle  a  dispute  between  Oola  and  the  man 
from  whom  he  had  just  purchased  the  broken  sled,  who 
was  also  its  maker,  as  to  whether  some  part  of  the  pur- 
chase money  should  be  refunded.  The  construction  of 
the  sled  was  too  slight  for  its  size,  there  was  no  doubt 
about  that,  but  the  only  safe  way  to  get  a  heavily-loaded 
sled  down  a  steep  bank  with  a  bend  in  the  trail  at  the 
bottom  is  to  turn  the  dogs  loose,  let  them  go  first  (they 
will  always  follow  the  trail),  and  then  shoot  the  free 
sled  down  the  bank,  allowing  its  momentum  to  carry  it 
as  far  as  it  will  in  a  straight  course.  Then  the  dogs 
can  be  brought  back  and  attached.  Walter,  with  his 
strength  and  his  skill,  prided  himself  on  making  such 
steep  descents,  dogs  and  all,  trusting  to  his  weight  at 
the  handlebars  to  swing  the  sled  clear  at  the  right  mo- 
ment ;  but  Oola,  not  as  skilled,  should  not  have  attempted 
it.  I  divided  the  loss  between  the  maker  and  the  breaker 
of  the  sled  and,  another  sled  procured  and  lunch  eaten 
at  the  mission,  we  started  again. 

This  incident  gave  further  point  to  a  reproof  I  had 
delivered  on  Sunday;  to  a  danger  that  accompanies 
mission  work  among  natives,  wherever  it  be  carried  on. 
Here  was  a  youth  of  twenty,  mission-bred  for  ten  years, 
well-grown,  well-appearing,  polite-spoken,  with  a  fair 
English  education  and  a  good  deal  of  general  informa- 
tion, who  had  been  used  for  a  long  time  as  Eskimo  inter- 
preter. But  he  had  never  made  a  sled,  or  a  pair  of  snow- 
shoes,  or  a  canoe,  in  his  life,  and  was  unpractised  in  the 
wilderness  arts  by  which  he  must  make  a  living  unless 
he  were  to  be  dependent  upon  mission  employment. 
"What  was  true  of  him  was  true  in  lesser  degree  of  other 
bright  boys  at  the  place,  and  I  found  the  same  tendency 
admitted — and  deplored — not  only  at  mission  stations  but 
at  places  where  there  was  only  a  governmental  school, 
along  the  coast.    I  make  no  doubt  that  it  might  be  found 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       37 

at  missions  in  Africa  or  the  Philippines  or  wherever  else 
education  in  the  common  sense  of  the  term  has  been  taken 
to  a  primitive  people.     It  is  not  unnatural  that  to  a 
school-teacher  school-learning  should  assume  an  unreal 
and  disproportionate  importance ;  it  is  not  unnatural  that 
ladies  of  gentle  rearing  should  fail  for  a  time  to  see  that 
the  essential  part  of  an  Indian's  education  is  training 
to  make  an  Indian  living.    We  are  all  of  us  drilled  in 
a  horror  of  illiteracy;  the  populations  of  our  various 
states,  of  the  various  nations  of  the  world,  are  graded, 
off-hand,  not  upon  conduct,  not  upon  comparative  indus- 
try and  thrift,  not  upon  the  percentage  of  criminals,  but 
upon  the  percentage  of  illiterates,  and  in  our  lofty  way 
we  regard  the  people  of  Mexico  and  Russia  as  hope- 
lessly brutalized   and   degraded  because  in  the   main 
they  cannot  read  and  write.    The  Prussian  wars  of  1866 
and  1870  were  said  to  have  been  won  by  the  Prussian 
schoolmaster.     Since  then  he  had  had  an  entirely  free 
hand,  had  redoubled  his  efforts  for  a  generation  and  a 
half,  and  when  in  1914  he  launched  the  world  war,  Prus- 
sia was   the  most   thoroughly   schoolmastered   country 
ever  known.    The  complete  defeat  and  downfall  of  the 
Prussian   system,  the   astonishing  collapse   of  swollen 
pride  and  ambition  with  which  the  war  has  ended,  may 
bring  to  the  nations  of  the  world  a  juster  valuation  of 
mere  intellectual  training,  and  the  spelling  book  and  the 
** reader"  may  not  loom  so  large.    But  almost  all  edu- 
cated people  of  today  are  still  saturated  with  the  delusion 
that  in  reading,  writing  and  arithmetic  lies  the  salvation 
of  mankind. 

It  is  not  easy  to  check  the  evil  effect  of  this  prejudice 
even  when  its  results  are  evident  amongst  primitive 
people  who  must  follow  the  exacting  pursuits  of  the  wil- 
derness for  a  livelihood.  A  bright  boy  to  whom  the  first 
antechambers  of  knowledge  are  opened  would  fain  press 
further,  and  duller  ones  are  continually  urged  by  his 
example ;  fathers  who  would  take  their  sons  hunting  and 
trapping  are  reluctant  to  break  the  continuity  of  the 

i  \j  J  ;i  o 


38  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

schooling  which  they  have  been  told  is  so  important, 
though  they  themselves  had  it  not.  I  declare  that  one 
sometimes  sympathizes  with  Jack  Cade 's  arraignment  of 
Lord  Say:  ''Thou  hast  most  traitorously  corrupted  the 
youth  of  this  realm  in  erecting  a  grammar  school ;  it  will 
be  proved  to  thy  face  that  thou  hast  men  about  thee 
that  commonly  talk  about  a  noun  and  a  verb  and  such 
abominable  words  as  no  Christian  ear  can  endure  to 
hear."  The  wise  teacher,  the  wise  missionary,  will  not 
seek  to  keep  boys  at  school  who  should  be  out  in  the 
woods  serving  their  apprenticeship,  but  pride  in  a  school 
is  often  too  strong  for  the  self-denying  ordinance  that 
would  bereave  it  of  its  most  creditable  and  promising 
pupils. 

I  have  felt  the  freer  to  make  these  animadversions  in 
connection  with  one  of  our  own  missions  in  which  I  am 
especially  interested,  where  the  school  moreover  is  our 
own  and  not  a  government  school,  and  in  connection  with 
an  Eskimo  boy  of  whom  I  am  personally  fond,  because  I 
found  the  same  situation  at  many  other  places  where 
criticism  might  seem  invidious.  The  danger  is  rec- 
ognized, and  that  is  the  first  requisite  towards  averting 
it.  I  had  told  the  assembled  people  on  Sunday  that  I 
was  much  more  ashamed  of  an  Indian  or  an  Eskimo 
youth  who  could  not  build  a  boat  or  a  sled  or  make  a 
pair  of  snowshoes  or  kill  a  moose  or  tend  a  trap-line, 
than  of  one  who  could  not  read  or  write.  ''Heading  and 
writing  are  good  things,  and  the  other  things  the  school 
,teaches  are  good  things,  and  that  is  why  we  put  the 
school  here  to  teach  them,  but  knowing  how  to  make  a 
living  on  the  river  or  in  the  woods,  winter  and  summer, 
is  a  very  much  better  thing,  a  very  much  more  important 
thing,  and  something  that  the  school  cannot  teach  and 
the  fathers  must.  Let  us  have  both  if  we  can,  but 
whatever  happens  don't  let  your  boys  grow  up  without 
learning  to  take  care  of  themselves  and  of  their  wives 
and  children  by  and  by."  The  elders  were  much  im- 
pressed and  pleased,  the  younger  not  a  little  surprised, 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       39 

and  the  old  chief,  Moses,  came  and  thanked  me  and  said 
he  was  always  trying  to  tell  his  people  the  same  thing. 

We  made  one,  or  is  it  two?,  false  starts  from  the  Alla- 
kaket,  (I  always  linger  at  the  Allakaket),  but  we  got 
away  at  last  about  one  in  the  afternoon  and  ran  up  the 
Alatna  river  by  a  portage  or  two  and  on  the  ice,  for  three 
and  a  half  hours  to  ''Black  Jack's  Place,"  where  were 
several  Eskimo  families  wintering  and  fishing  through 
the  ice,  with  one  of  whom  we  took  our  lodging  for  the 
night.  It  proved  to  be  for  three  nights.  When  we  left 
the  mission  with  the  thermometer  at  — 36,  already  the 
coldest  spell  of  our  whole  winter  had  begun,  though  we 
knew  it  not.  The  thermometer  stood  at  — 49  when  we 
went  to  bed,  the  next  morning  it  stood  at  — 56,  the 
next  at  — 63,  and  the  next  at  — 60,  much  too  cold  for  trav- 
elling if  a  man  have  any  choice.  Throughout  the  whole 
interior  of  Alaska  this  winter  of  1917-18  was  one  of  the 
coldest  on  record.  The  mean  temperatures  for  the 
months  of  December  and  January  at  the  meteorological 
stations  on  the  Yukon  were  lower  than  any  previous 
means  of  those  months  in  the  twenty  years  during  which 
records  have  been  kept.  These  low  temperatures  did  not 
extend  to  the  coast,  which  has  a  distinct  climate  of  its 
own,  but  we  were  still  within  the  continental  climate  of 
the  interior. 

The  dwelling  we  shared  was  not  a  typical  Eskimo 
dwelling ;  the  country  being  well  timbered  it  was  built  of 
logs ;  but  it  had  distinctive  Eskimo  features,  notably  the 
window  of  seal-gut,  the  dim  translucence  of  which  did 
but  sufficiently  light  the  cabin  around  noon.  That  same 
window  was  just  about  as  good  a  thermometer  as  my 
own  registered  instrument  with  its  certificate  from  the 
Bureau  of  Standards  at  Washington,  and  it  indicated  the 
degree  of  cold  by  the  thickness  of  the  layer  of  hoar-frost 
which  accumulated  upon  it.  The  old  woman  of  the  house 
would  take  a  goose-wing  and  a  piece  of  board  and  gather 
the  frost  from  it  periodically  with  much  advantage  to  the 
illumination  of  the  cabin,  and  without  stepping  outdoors  it 


40  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

was  possible  to  keep  track  of  the  intensity  of  the  cold  at 
any  time  by  observing  this  window.  Nothing  that  these 
people  could  do  for  our  convenience  and  comfort  was 
omitted.  They  kept  plenty  of  wood  and  water  on  hand, 
they  brought  forth  frozen  fish  and  frozen  ducks  and 
geese;  the  old  woman  insisted  on  washing  our  dishes 
after  every  meal,  and  was  scrupulous  to  do  it  in  my  way 
rather  than  her  own;  the  men  would  have  made  the  out- 
doors fire  and  cooked  our  dog-feed  had  we  allowed  them. 
Morning  and  evening  men,  women  and  children  gathered 
and  sat,  awaiting  the  arrival  of  my  interpreter,  who  was 
lodged  in  another  cabin,  for  the  instruction  I  was  glad 
of  the  opportunity  to  give. 

Although  I  began  to  be  anxious  at  the  delay,  and  was 
ever  counting  up  the  days  that  remained  till  Christmas 
and  dividing  their  diminishing  number  into  the  approxi- 
mate distance  to  be  travelled,  I  did  not  find  the  detention 
tedious.  I  should,  of  course,  at  any  rate,  have  supported 
it  with  the  philosophy  of  the  Arctic,  and  there  is  no  better 
region  to  teach  a  man  patience,  but  the  days  passed  so 
cosily  and  so  busily  occupied  that  I  look  back  upon  the 
stay  at  Black  Jack's  with  pleasure.  Outside,  in  the  utter 
stillness  of  the  ''strong  cold,"  lay  the  snow-sprinkled 
spruce  forest  right  up  to  the  river  bank,  save  for  the 
little  clearing  around  the  cabin,  and  from  the  bank 
stretched  open  expanse  of  frozen  river,  the  jagged  ice 
of  the  middle  only  partially  smoothed  over  by  snow. 
The  slow  coming  and  going  of  daylight,  accompanied  as  it 
always  is  in  low  temperatures  by  zones  of  brilliant  pure 
colour  on  the  horizon  fading  far  up  into  the  sky,  was 
reflected  most  delicately  yet  faithfully  upon  the  river 
surface  in  all  its  changing  tints.  Yellow  sunlight  with- 
out heat  suddenly  struck  that  dead,  opaque  surface  with 
a  fairy's  wand,  and  for  an  hour  or  so  every  snow-crystal 
sprang  to  life,  gleaming  and  glancing  like  a  diamond. 
At  night  a  white  splendour  of  waning  moon  and  such  a 
sparkling  multiplicity  of  stars  as  is  known,  I  think,  only 
in  these  latitudes  and  this  weather,  were  attended  by  a 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       41 

notable  exuberance  and  vivacity  of  many-tinted  aurora. 
Never  did  these  strange  radiances  give  me  stronger  im- 
pression of  conscious  exultation  in  the  silence  and  the 
cold.  Had  the  writer  of  the  Benedicite  been  familiar 
with  the  northern  lights,  I  am  sure  he  would  have  ad- 
dressed to  them  a  special  invitation  to  join  his  chorus 
of  praise.  We  are  told  that  the  Arabs  owed  their  re- 
markable proficiency  in  astronomy  to  the  clearness  of  the 
desert  skies ;  I  think  that  the  natives  of  the  north  would 
have  surpassed  them  were  not  clear  arctic  skies  always 
accompanied  by  a  cold  that  forbids  star-gazing.  Our 
mild  winter  weather  goes  with  leaden  skies,  and  in  sum- 
mer there  are  no  stars  at  all. 

But  it  is  on  our  indoor  occupations  that  I  linger  with 
chief  pleasure  of  recollection.  A  dirty  little  hovel  enough, 
no  doubt,  our  lodging  would  be  counted  by  my  readers, 
yet  with  our  robes  and  bedding  thrown  down  in  a  corner 
on  a  pile  of  skins,  a  stool  and  a  box  to  sit  on,  and  a  pocket 
acetylene  lamp,  it  was  comfortable  and  even  commodious 
for  study,  and  Walter  displayed  an  eagerness  to  learn 
and  a  new-sharpened  quickness  of  apprehension  that 
made  teaching  him  a  delight.  We  were  starting  Macbeth; 
first  I  gave  him  a  general  sketch  of  the  play  and  read  an 
act  aloud  to  him ;  then  he  read  the  same  act  aloud  to  me, 
and  this,  with  its  correction  of  mispronunciations,  its 
assimilation  of  new  words  and  thoughts,  was  always  the 
most  valuable  part  of  our  work.  I  marvel  that  reading 
aloud  has  fallen  into  educational  disuse ;  there  is  simply 
no  other  exercise  that  can  take  its  place.  The  dark  and 
bloody  tragedy  made  strong  appeal  to  Walter,  and  its 
supernatural  machinery  of  witches  and  apparitions  called 
up  remembrance  of  the  old  Indian  stories  with  wliich  his 
juvenile  mind  had  been  familiar,  and  thus  there  needed 
not  the  half -contemptuous,  apologetic  explanations  which 
the  average  high-school  teacher  of  English  appends  now- 
adays to  his  edition  of  the  play.  Our  half-educated 
youths  grow  too  wise  to  appreciate  the  classics  of  litera- 
ture, and  turn  eagerly  to  Popular  Mechanics  and  The 


42  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Scientific  American,  while  the  deep  emotions  of  their 
dwindling  souls  remained  untouched.  From  the  weird 
sisters  on  the  blasted  heath  was  an  easy  transition  when 
the  reading  was  done  to  the  tales  of  his  childhood  re- 
ferred to,  and  he  told  me  how  the  children  would  gather 
in  the  firelight  round  some  old  woman  and  beg  her  for  a 
story,  and  sit  still  for  hours  while  she  wound  the  in- 
terminable course  of  some  piece  of  Indian  folk-lore,  so 
replete  with  delicious  terrors  that  sometimes  they  were 
afraid  to  go  home  to  bed.  The  dissimilarities  which  a 
new  strange  people  present  make  first  appeal  to  the  ob- 
server; afterwards  it  is  the  underlying  resemblances, 
and  at  last  the  fundamental  identity,  that  most  promi- 
nently stand  out,  and,  in  particular,  the  more  I  see  of 
Indian  and  Eskimo  children  the  more  I  am  struck  with 
the  oneness  of  childhood  the  world  over. 

Once  grown  reminiscent,  Walter  told  me  much  more  of 
his  early  recollections,  and  in  the  two  or  three  nights  at 
Black  Jack's  Place  I  gained  a  clearer  and  more  intimate 
view  of  his  very  interesting  early  years  than  I  had  ever 
had  before.  "When  we  had  said  our  prayers  and  gone  to 
bed,  instead  of  reading  myself  to  sleep  with  Gibbon  as 
was  my  wont,  I  sat  up  again  and  wrote  in  some  of  the 
blank  leaves  of  my  diary  what  he  had  told  me  of  himself. 
One  prank  amused  me  specially,  as  a  pleasant  variant  of 
the  "freshman"  toe-pulling  that  used  to  prevail  at  the 
lesser  colleges.  In  the  warmth  of  sununer  when  the  tent- 
flaps  were  raised  for  air,  he  and  his  companions  would 
find  a  particularly  tough  piece  of  dried  fish  and  tie  it 
firmly  to  one  end  of  a  stout  string  of  caribou  hide,  the 
other  being  attached  to  the  great  toe  of  a  sleeping  Indian. 
Presently  some  prowling  dog  would  come  along  and  bolt 
the  piece  of  fish.  On  one  occasion,  lingering  too  long  or 
laughing  too  loudly,  Walter  got  a  sound  thrashing  from 
his  exasperated  victim. 

On  the  morning  of  Thursday,  29th  November,  being 
Thanksgiving  Day,  the  thermometer  stood  at  — 58,  when 
we  arose,  but  by  noon  had  risen  to  — 53,  and  as  a  coinci- 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   43 

dent  fall  of  the  aneroid  barometer  gave  me  reason  to 
hope  that  the  cold  spell  was  breaking,  I  decided  to  move, 
though  but  to  another  cabin  some  ten  miles  further  on. 
The  run  was  very  chilly  and  I  had  great  trouble  in  keep- 
ing my  feet  warm  and  was  rejoiced  to  see  smoke  issuing 
from  the  cabin  when  it  came  in  sight.  We  found  an  old 
Eskimo  friend  Sonoko  Billy,  who  was  making  it  his  trap- 
ping headquarters  this  winter,  a  bright  good-natured 
chap  whom  I  was  glad  to  see  again,  and  the  five  of  us 
made  what  cheer  we  could  for  Thanksgiving  dinner  with 
a  stew  of  moose  meat,  dried  vegetables,  soup  powder  and 
beef  extract,  and  then  said  the  service  for  the  day. 

The  next  day,  St.  Andrew's  Day,  the  last  day  of  No- 
vember, was  the  25th  anniversary  of  my  ordination  to 
the  priesthood.  Making  an  altar  of  the  grub  box,  lit 
by  two  candles  in  the  darkness  of  early  morning,  I  cele- 
brated the  Holy  Communion  before  breakfast,  and  was 
happy  to  have  two  communicants,  Walter  and  Oola,  to 
kneel  and  receive  the  sacrament  with  me. 

With  my  reflections  upon  the  occasion,  even  such  as 
are  jotted  down  in  my  diary,  I  shall  not  trouble  the 
reader ;  suffice  it  that  the  grimy  cabin,  one  window  of  gut 
and  another  of  a  slab  of  ice,  the  burnt-out,  broken-down 
stove  with  its  rusty,  crooked  stove  pipe,  the  candles  gut- 
tering in  tin  cans,  and  the  natives  of  two  different  races 
beside  me,  made  not  unfitting  scene  for  the  anniversary 
of  a  ministry,  more  than  half  of  which  had  been  spent  in 
the  Arctic  wilderness. 

We  had  travelled,  I  suppose,  some  twenty-five  miles 
since  we  left  the  AUakaket ;  that  day  we  made  almost  as 
much  more.  The  temperature  was  slowly  and  gradually 
rising,  as  I  had  expected,  but  it  was  still  cold  weather  and 
there  was  a  light  air  moving  downstream  that  cut  the 
face  and  rendered  travelling  unpleasant.  All  day  the 
themometer  stood  around  —35  to  —38,  the  former  being 
the  reading  at  noon  when  we  made  a  rousing  fire  on  the 
bank  and  ate  lunch,  and  the  latter  the  reading  when  at 
3.20  we  found  an  old  convenient  camping  place  of  Sonoko 


44  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Billy's,  with  spruce  brush  already  in  place,  and  stopped 
for  the  night.  Four  pairs  of  hands  made  quick  camping, 
the  tent  was  soon  up,  the  dogs  tied  at  sufficient  intervals 
to  prevent  fighting,  a  dry  tree  felled  and  split,  a  supply  of 
ice  chipped  out  of  the  river ;  and  I  was  shortly  cooking 
for  the  boys  over  the  camp  stove  while  they  were  cooking 
for  the  dogs  at  a  great  fire  outdoors. 

There  are  two  incidents  noted  in  my  diary  for  that  day 
that  are  of  interest,  one  pleasant  and  one  painful.  As 
we  turned  the  bends  of  the  river  after  leaving  our  lunch 
camp,  we  opened  one  that  had  a  due  north  and  south  di- 
rection, and  the  sun's  direct  rays,  growing  more  and 
more  unaccustomed  as  the  winter  advanced  and  there- 
fore more  and  more  welcome  and  delightful,  fell  full 
upon  the  little  party.  Walter  was  at  the  handlebars  of 
our  main  sled,  just  ahead  of  me,  and  was  wearing  a  cari- 
bou skin  coat  with  a  broad  band  of  beadwork  across  the 
shoulders  in  the  gay  Indian  fashion  that  he  loved  and 
that  his  graceful  figure  carried  so  well.  As  we  turned 
into  the  sunshine  and  the  light  fell  full  upon  his  back,  the 
greens  and  golds  of  the  beadwork  gleamed  like  the  iri- 
descent wings  of  a  beetle,  and  for  half  an  hour  or  so  I 
had  a  continual  pleasure  in  watching  its  sheen.  The 
sharp  diamond  sparkle  of  the  snow  crystals  all  around 
returning  the  sun's  light,  did  but  emphasize  the  softer 
lustre  of  the  emerald  and  malachite,  the  turquoise  and 
lapis  lazuli  and  gold  upon  his  shoulders.  So  devoid  of 
colour  is  this  country  in  winter  (save  for  the  tinting  of 
the  sky),  so  black  and  white  is  everything  that  the  eye 
normally  falls  upon,  that  there  is  a  keen  pleasure  in  any 
bright  colours,  hard  for  outsiders  to  understand.  The 
tiny  opaque  beads  massed  together  in  rich  harmonious 
shades  relieved  and  divided  by  gold  and  spread  out  in 
graceful  flowing  patterns,  give  beautiful  bodies  of  colour. 
Beadwork  I  used  to  regard  as  barbarous,  but  in  its  best 
productions  (and  only  its  best  is  worth  anything  at  all) 
it  can  be  highly  artistic  and  attractive  and  is  akin  to  fine 
Venetian  mosaic  work  in  its  effect.    The  art,  of  course, 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        45 

is  not  indigenous.  It  is  continually  strange  to  find  people 
who  imagine  it  to  be: — where  did  the  beads  come  from 
until  the  white  man  brought  them?  Probably  the  only 
indigenous  Indian  decorative  art  was  embroidery  with 
porcupine  quills  stained  with  vegetable  juices,  and  the 
best  of  that  is  skilful  and  beautiful  also ;  but  while  bead- 
work  began  only  with  the  importation  of  beads,  for  fifty 
or  seventy-five  years  or  more  in  the  interior  of  Alaska 
it  has  been  a  distinctive  native  art.  Those  who  judge  it 
by  some  chance  piece  of  cheap  work  offered  to  visitors 
at  an  Indian  store  on  the  Yukon  may  form  very  poor 
and  very  wrong  opinion  of  its  possibilities,  but  those  who 
have  seen  its  best  productions  will  acknowledge  that  it 
has  a  beauty  of  its  own.  When  upon  a  solid  background 
of  white  beads  a  simple,  symmetrical,  conventional  de- 
sign is  worked  in  well-selected  shades  of  a  colour,  the 
resemblance  to  mosaic  w^ork  is  striking,  and  I  am  con- 
vinced that  only  in  such  measure  as  the  limitations  of 
mosaic  work  are  observed,  may  artistic  result  in  bead- 
work  be  obtained.  Although  the  Eskimos  had  beads 
before  the  Indians,  nowhere  has  any  art  of  bead  embroid- 
ery sprung  up  amongst  them,  and  such  Eskimo  work  as 
I  have  seen  is  merely  a  very  poor  imitation  of  Indian 
work. 

A  book  that  might  teem  with  interest  and  romance  is 
waiting  for  someone  to  write  on  the  subject  of  beads. 
Not  only  is  their  antiquity  enormous,  going  back  to 
Egyptian  and  Phenician  times  and  stretching  through  all 
subsequent  history,  but  they  have  ever  been  in  the  fore- 
front of  man's  progress  in  knowledge  of  the  world.  They 
have  accompanied  every  adventurer  who  opened  inter- 
course with  new,  primitive  people,  as  his  chief  medium 
of  exchange.  Gold  and  ivory,  apes  and  peacocks,  the 
rarest  and  costliest  furs,  even  human  flesh  itself,  cargoes 
of  slaves,  robust  men,  beautiful  women  and  children, 
have  been  purchased  with  them.  They  have  travelled 
from  hand  to  hand  over  whole  continents  far  ahead  of 
any  explorer,  and  form  no  inconsiderable  factor  in  the 


46  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

long  romance  of  trade.  Their  very  name  is  redolent  of 
anchorites  in  the  desert,  of  monks  in  cloistered  cells,  of 
wandering  Buddhist  priests  and  lamas  in  the  mountains 
of  Thibet,  for  the  word  "bead"  means  simply  a  prayer. 

Here  is  a  bead  that  I  take  from  a  drawer  in  my  desk 
and  set  before  me  as  I  write ;  a  large,  cylindrical  piece  of 
blue  glass,  pierced  through  the  centre  and  dulled  with 
constant  wear.  It  was  the  labret,  or  lip  ornament,  of  an 
aged  Eskimo  from  the  Colville  river,  who  died  at  the  Al- 
lakaket  some  years  ago,  and  it  had  been  the  chief  per- 
sonal treasure,  not  only  of  himself  but  of  his  father,  his 
grandfather  and  his  great-grandfather,  as  he  told  us. 
No  price  whatever  would  induce  him  to  part  with  it, 
though  while  living  at  the  mission  he  never  wore  it,  and 
it  is  interesting  that  Beechey  in  1826  found  the  same  im- 
possibility of  purchasing  just  such  large  blue  beads  used 
as  labrets,  and  conjectured  therefrom  that  they  were 
insignia  of  rank.  (Vol.  I,  p.  458.)  I  counted  up  that  its 
known  history  must  extend  well  over  a  century  and  prob- 
ably half  as  much  again,  and  thus  go  back  to  a  time  long 
before  any  white  man  had  touched  the  north  of  Alaska. 
It  probably  reached  the  coast  by  barter  with  the  natives 
of  Siberia,  had  been  procured  by  them  from  Cossack 
traders,  and  ultimately  came  from  some  Venetian  glass 
blower,  perhaps  of  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century. 
Nay,  for  aught  I  know  it  may  have  been  brought  from 
Venice  by  Marco  Polo  himself,  who  was  the  first  to  tell 
the  world  of  the  Asiatic  hyperboreans,  their  dog-sleds 
and  reindeer-sleds,  for  a  skip  of  four  hundred  years  is 
a  little  thing  in  the  history  of  indestructible  glass.  Could 
lifeless  objects  acquire  taint  or  tincture  of  human  per- 
sonality by  long,  intimate  association,  surely  this  bead, 
aflflated  by  every  breath  of  four  generations  of  Eskimos, 
should  carry  something  of  the  spirit  of  that  brave  and 
sturdy  race. 

See  how  far  Walter's  beads  glistening  in  the  sunlight 
have  carried  me !  The  imagination  is  prone  to  vagrancy 
as  one  trots  along,  hour  after  hour,  at  the  handlebars 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZBBUE  SOUND       47 

of  the  sled,  for  the  mind  must  occupy  itself  in  one  way 
or  another.  Presently  the  brief  sunlight  fades,  the  long, 
slow  twilight  begins,  the  dead  black  and  white  reassert 
themselves,  and  shortly  before  we  come  to  our  evening 
halt  there  is  a  disturbance  amidst  the  smooth  snow 
ahead,  a  little  off  the  trail,  a  jumping  and  scuffling  that 
excite  the  dogs  to  redouble  their  pace.  When  the  sleds 
are  stopped  and  the  dogs  controlled  with  the  whips,  two 
of  us  approach  and  find  a  lynx  alive  in  a  steel  trap  and 
notice  that  the  leg  caught  within  the  jaws  of  the  trap  has 
been  gnawed  almost  in  two.  The  leg  was,  of  course,  fro- 
zen; the  pressure  of  the  steel  had  stopped  all  circulation 
of  the  blood  in  it,  and  in  our  winter  temperatures  an 
inert  limb  does  not  long  retain  vitality,  so  there  was  no 
pain  in  the  gnawing.  But  the  lynx  would  have  endeav- 
oured to  free  himself  in  the  same  way  had  its  leg  not 
been  frozen;  trappers  all  tell  me  that.  Often  it  is  suc- 
cessful ;  a  trapper  will  find  no  more  than  the  leg  of  a  lynx 
in  his  trap,  and  may  even  catch  the  same  lynx  again  in 
the  same  trap  by  another  leg.  The  gnawed  stump  seems 
to  heal  up  perfectly  and  I  am  assured  that  sometimes  a 
three-legged  lynx  will  live  a  long  time  and  thrive.  It  is 
a  ghastly  business  at  best,  this  trapping,  and  I  had  rather 
make  my  living  chopping  steamboat  wood  than  follow  it. 
Most  of  the  animals  caught  in  the  cold  weather  freeze  to 
death  after  exhausting  themselves  in  ineffectual  efforts 
to  escape;  some  are  attacked  in  their  defenceless  state 
by  other  animals  and  killed  and  eaten;  or  have  their 
eyes  picked  out  by  the  ravens  and  are  then  torn  to  pieces 
and  devoured.  A  large  percentage  of  all  trapped  animals 
bring  no  profit  to  the  trapper,  especially  if  he  have  a  long 
trap  line  and  his  visits  therefore  be  not  very  frequent. 
I  am  not  denying  the  legitimacy  of  the  occupation — I 
wear  a  marten-skin  cap  myself — ^but  am  only  expressing 
my  own  distaste  for  it.  It  brings  up  the  whole  subject 
of  the  right  to  inflict  pain  upon  the  animals,  and  I  hold 
that  man  has  that  right,  but  I  am  glad  that  it  does  not 
fall  to  me  to  do  it  for  a  livelihood.    Athlanuk  took  his  .22 


48  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

rifle  and  shot  the  lynx  through  the  head  and  presently 
hung  him  up  on  a  driftwood  pole  where  Sonoko  BiUy 
would  find  him  and  add  a  fifteen-dollar  pelt  to  his  win- 
ter's catch. 

Here,  if  rest  and  supper  were  not  so  close  at  hand,  and 
we  newly  returned  from  a  long  excursus,  the  imagination 
might  again  take  flight.  Furs  are  as  potent  a  wand  as 
beads  to  open  the  chambers  of  thought,  and  besides  their 
power  of  association  they  constitute  no  insignificant  part 
in  value  of  the  actual  trade  of  the  world.  What  is  the 
early  history  of  Canada  and  the  United  States  but  a  his- 
tory of  the  fur  trade?  From  emperors  and  kings  who 
wore  them  as  robes  of  state,  from  the  heralds  who  set 
them  in  armorial  bearings  as  emblems  of  dignity,  down 
to  the  war-millionaires  who  have  made  the  price  of 
them  soar  today  so  that  fox  and  lynx  and  marten  bring 
ten  times  what  they  did  a  few  years  ago,  they  have  al- 
ways been  an  object  of  desire  to  luxury  and  pride.  But 
I  have  wondered  whether  the  fashionable  women  who 
flaunt  the  animal's  skin  after  it  has  been  made  *'soft  and 
smooth  and  sleek,  and  meet  For  Broadway  or  for  Regent 
Street,"  as  Oliver  Herford  writes, — not  with  the  legiti- 
mate purpose  of  warmth  and  protection,  or  the  prepos- 
terous fashion  of  summer  furs  would  never  have  been 
introduced — ^but  merely  for  purpose  of  ostentation,  ever 
think  upon  the  tortures  that  the  procuring  of  it  in- 
volves. I  am  of  opinion  that  there  would  be  something 
to  be  said  in  favour  of  sumptuary  laws  if  there  were  any 
possibility  of  executing  them. 

Having  travelled  some  forty-five  miles  up  the  Alatna 
river,  we  knew  that  the  spot  was  now  not  far  distant 
where  we  must  leave  the  river  to  strike  across  country. 
Oola  and  Athlanuk  had  made  the  journey  within  a  year 
or  two;  my  own  single  excursion  into  these  parts  was 
twelve  years  before,  so  that  I  depended  upon  them  to 
recognize  the  landmarks  that  indicated  the  beginning  of 
the  portage.  Within  a  couple  of  hours'  run  the  next 
morning  they  found  the  place  and  we  left  the  ice  for  the 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   49 

forty  miles  or  so  of  rough,  broken  country  that  lay  be- 
tween us  and  the  Kobuk  river,  making  immediately  a 
steady  gradual  rise  of  several  hundred  feet.  Only  a  few 
inches  of  snow  covered  the  inequalities  of  the  surface, 
the  recent  Koyukuk  snows  not  having  extended  hither; 
there  had  been  no  previous  passage  of  the  winter;  the 
trail  we  must  discover  by  such  ancient  blazes  on  trees, 
such  slight  and  partial  clearing  of  brush  here  and  there, 
as  travellers  of  other  winters  had  left  behind  them.  The 
main  direction,  however,  was  plain;  a  wide  gap  between 
the  mountains  to  the  right  hand  and  to  the  left,  between 
those  forming  the  watershed  between  the  upper  Alatna 
and  the  Kobuk,  and  those  forming  the  watershed  between 
the  Hogatzatna  and  the  Kobuk,  was  our  open  highway, 
and  striking  almost  due  west  we  would  be  sure  to  reach 
the  Kobuk.  The  trail,  however,  could  we  keep  it,  would 
advantage  us  by  avoiding  dense  brush  and  impossibly 
steep  gullies ;  by  leading  us  to  such  lakes  and  stream-beds 
as  would  afford  easiest  progress. 

iWe  covered,  I  think,  no  more  than  ten  miles  of  that 
portage,  winding  about  through  the  scrub  timber,  essay- 
ing first  one  opening  and  then  another,  until  it  was 
grown  too  dark  to  detect  the  old,  discoloured  blazes,  and 
we  made  camp.  That  day  was  the  1st  December,  and  by 
my  programme  of  itinerary  I  should  already  be  on  the 
Kobuk  river.  The  rapidly  shortening  days  were  ren- 
dered yet  shorter  for  us  on  this  portage  in  that  we  needed 
a  good  light  to  travel  at  all ;  we  could  not  start  until  day 
was  well  come  nor  continue  after  it  began  to  be  spent. 
With  a  plain  trail  one  may  travel  early  and  late,  but  our 
present  search  for  signs  of  the  road  denied  us  both. 

My  chief  recollection  of  this  portage  journey  of  forty 
or  fifty  miles  is  of  pleasant  noon  rests,  with  great  roar- 
ing bonfires  and  piles  of  spruce  boughs  to  sit  upon,  of 
bacon  eaten  sizzling  just  oif  the  frying-pan — the  only 
way  I  can  eat  it  at  all, — of  beans  (previously  boiled  and 
then  frozen)  heated  with  butter  and  sprinkled  with 
grated  cheese  and  eaten  piping  hot.    My  boys  had  tre- 


50  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

mendous  appetites  and  scorned  the  thermos  bottle  lunch 
to  which  Walter  and  I  were  accustomed.  They  would 
top  off  a  meal  like  this  with  crackers  spread  thick  with 
butter  and  jam,  and  a  can  of  the  latter  would  serve  for 
no  more  than  one  occasion.  We  found  ourselves  indeed 
joining  them  with  zest;  the  winter  trail  makes  one  al- 
ways keen  set.  Four  pairs  of  hands  made  all  the  work 
light  and  both  men  and  dogs  lost  nothing,  I  think,  by 
rest  and  substantial  food  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  but  I 
was  careful  that  no  more  than  an  hour  be  thus  spent,  the 
brief  daylight  was  too  precious.  Natives  generally  have 
no  notion  of  the  use  of  one  kind  of  food  as  a  relish  or 
condiment  to  another.  I  well  remember  the  native  boy 
of  my  first  winter  journey  falling  upon  our  one  can  of  pre- 
serves with  a  spoon  and  remarking  ''Strawb'y  jam  is  de 
onlies  jam  dey  is!"  When  it  is  gone  it  is  gone  *'and 
there's  an  end  on't";  so  long  as  it  lasts  it  is  just  a  can 
of  food,  no  more  to  be  spread  thin  than  if  it  were  a  can 
of  pork  and  beans.  This  is  why  it  is  difficult  to  stock  a 
grub  box  for  natives  and  whites  at  the  same  time. 

My  two  Eskimo  boys,  brothers,  were  helpful  and  will- 
ing on  the  trail  and  gentle  and  polite  in  camp,  and  it  was 
a  pleasure  to  have  them  with  us.  Under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances I  should  have  taken  pleasure  in  attempting 
some  slight  addition  to  their  education  as  we  journeyed, 
but  the  exigencies  of  Walter's  college  preparation  left 
no  leisure.  I  was  gratified,  however,  that  at  our  evening 
service  one  of  them  was  able  to  read  aloud  with  intelli- 
gence the  first  lesson  for  the  day,  and  the  other,  the  sec- 
ond, and  to  find,  in  both  of  them,  some  understanding 
and  appreciation  of  what  they  read.  The  Bible  was  their 
chief,  almost  their  only,  literature,  and,  after  all,  where 
will  a  nobler,  a  wider  or  more  varied  body  of  literature 
be  found  within  one  volume  ?  They  had  grown  up  at  the 
mission,  the  family  having  come  to  the  place  when  it  was 
established  and  remained  there  ever  since,  and  while  the 
elder  had  neglected  his  wood-craft  and  snow-craft  for 
his  studies,  as  I  have  intimated,  for  which  the  mission 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   51 

was  as  much  to  blame  as  he,  the  younger  had  broken 
away  in  greater  degree  and  was  fairly  well  accomplished. 
The  teaching  at  this  mission  has  always  been  earnest  and 
painstaking;  an  unusual  series  of  cultivated  and  devoted 
women  has  had  charge  of  it,  and,  such  slight  criticism  as 
I  have  felt  free  to  make  notwithstanding,  it  has  been  a 
centre  of  sweetness  and  light  for  a  remote  neglected  re- 
gion, and  the  whole  condition  of  native  life  therein  has 
been  modified  and  meliorated  by  it,  let  who  will  be  the 
judge.  With  Walter  beside  me,  however,  past-master 
as  he  was  of  all  the  skill  of  the  woods  and  the  trail,  I 
could  never  admit  that  the  neglect  of  native  arts  was 
necessary  to  advancement  in  book-education;  the  two  can 
go  on  and  must  go  on  side  by  side,  and  if  either  be  neg- 
lected no  one  with  the  good  of  the  natives  at  heart  will 
maintain  that  it  should  be  the  former. 

We  reached  the  Kobuk  at  midday  of  the  4th  December, 
three  days  behind  my  schedule;  the  latter  half  of  the 
portage  journey  having  been  mainly  on  lakes  and  streams 
draining  into  that  river;  and  crossing  its  broad  surface 
immediately  to  the  north  bank  we  found  there  a  fine  old 
camping  place,  evidently,  from  rude  inscriptions,  the  site 
of  a  considerable  hunting  camp  of  the  previous  Septem- 
ber. Two  lop-sticks  spoke  to  me  of  the  presence  in  that 
party  of  someone  from  the  Mackenzie  country,  for  the 
practice  of  stripping  a  tall  tree  of  all  but  its  topmost 
crown  of  branches  to  mark  a  site  or  commemorate  an 
event,  is  common  on  the  Canadian  side  but  almost  un- 
known on  the  Alaskan  side  of  the  boundary;  and  so,  on 
enquiry  later,  appeared.  A  glorious  fire  and  a  good 
lunch,  the  raising  of  our  spirits  by  the  completion  of  one 
more  stretch  of  our  journey;  the  prospect  of  quick  travel 
on  the  smooth  surface  of  the  river — for  the  small  quan- 
tity of  snow  that,  so  far,  had  fallen  this  winter  was  now 
become  a  great  advantage  to  us  again — all  helped  to 
make  this  noon  camp  notable  and  enjoyable,  to  which, 
also,  mild  and  still  weather  contributed  in  no  small 
degree. 


52  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Across  the  whole  portage  there  was  no  riding  at  all; 
we  were  all  on  foot  all  the  way.  Now  there  was  oppor- 
tunity to  jump  on  the  sled  from  time  to  time  without 
stopping  the  teams,  and  because  our  dress  had  been  ac- 
commodated to  the  more  active  travel  and  one  does  not 
while  riding  immediately  realize  how  cold  the  extremi- 
ties are  growing,  we  all  became  miserably  chilled  towards 
evening.  Stopping  to  add  a  sweater  to  my  clothing, 
beating  my  hands  against  my  breast  and  stamping  my 
feet,  I  looked  back  some  distance  to  see  Oola  and  Athla- 
nuk  similarly  employed,  and  we  all  ran  or  trotted  for 
several  miles  before  warmth  was  restored.  Moreover, 
the  higher  ground  of  a  portage  is  always  warmer  than 
the  low  level  of  a  river  bed,  besides  being  more  sheltered 
from  moving  air. 

We  had  an  habitation  as  goal  that  night,  and  so  ran  on 
well  after  dark,  making  twenty  miles,  I  judge,  after  noon, 
and  at  last  reached  the  old  igloo,  not  then  occupied  but 
evidently  a  native  trapper's  headquarters,  which  is  called 
"Oh-ho-the-a-ra-wtk/'  ''the  beaver  hunting-place." 

This  day's  run  carried  us  past  the  mouth  of  the  small 
stream  which  drains  Lake  Selby,  one  of  the  considerable 
lakes  of  this  region,  and  this  lake,  while  not  in  sight  from 
the  river,  is  but  a  few  miles  off  and  calls  to  mind  Stoney's 
explorations  of  the  Kobuk  in  the  years  1883  and  1886. 

While  the  exploration  of  most  of  the  interior  of  Alaska, 
the  tracing  of  the  course  of  the  Tanana,  the  Koyukuk, 
the  Copper  river,  the  Sushitna,  and,  in  part,  the  Kus- 
kokwim,  was  performed  by  officers  of  the  United  States 
Army,  it  happened  that  the  early  reconnaissances  of  this 
region,  and  the  first  mapping  of  the  Kobuk,  the  Noatak 
and  the  Selawik  rivers,  all  falling  into  Kotzebue  Sound, 
were  done  by  naval  detachments,  and  it  is  interesting 
to  note  that  it  so  happened  by  accident. 

Merely  noticing  the  early  reconnaissance  of  Captain 
Bedford  Pim  of  the  Franklin  search  parties,  whose  well- 
known  journey  was  southward  from  Kotzebue  Sound  to 
the  Yukon,  it  is  the  name  of  Lieut.  Stoney  that  must 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        53 

always  head  the  story  of  the  exploration  to  the  north- 
ward and  westward  of  this  region; — and  it  happened 
thus. 

In  1881  the  Rodgers  was  despatched  to  seek  for  the 
Jeannette,  the  ill-fated  vessel  which  Mr.  Gordon  Ben- 
nett sent  under  De  Long  in  an  attempt  to  reach  the 
North  Pole  by  way  of  Bering  Sea.  The  Rodgers,  after 
vainly  searching  Wrangell  and  Herald  Islands  and  the 
Siberian  coast,  was  accidentally  burned  in  St.  Lawrence 
Bay  and  the  ship's  company  was  saved  from  starvation 
by  the  kindness  of  Eskimos.  Two  years  later  Lieut. 
Stoney,  one  of  the  officers  of  the  Rodgers,  was  sent 
with  presents  from  the  United  States  government  to 
these  natives,  and,  his  mission  accomplished  in  the  rev- 
enue cutter  Corivin,  he  left  that  vessel  to  make  her  fur- 
ther cruise  to  the  north,  and  while  he  awaited  her  return 
gratified  his  desire  to  search  for  a  large  river  reported 
by  Captain  Beechey  more  than  fifty  years  before  as  fall- 
ing into  Hotham's  Inlet. 

Stoney  had  no  more  than  time  to  verify  the  report  on 
this  occasion,  but  induced  the  secretary  of  the  navy  to 
send  him  back  next  year  with  a  small  schooner  and  a 
steam  launch  to  prosecute  his  discoveries,  and  upon  his 
return  from  a  successful  journey  up  the  Kobuk  as  far 
as  this  lake,  which  he  named,  induced  the  navy  depart- 
ment to  send  him  once  more,  this  time  with  a  wintering 
party,  upon  which  occasion — the  winter  of  1885-86 — the 
various  members  of  his  party  made  extensive  journeys 
and  the  country  between  the  Yukon  and  Kotzebue  Sound 
and  the  northern  ocean  was  pretty  well  explored.  So 
little  real  interest  was  there  in  the  matter  in  govern- 
ment circles,  however,  that  Stoney 's  report,  after  being 
ordered  printed  by  Congress,  was  lost  for  ten  years  and, 
so  far  as  I  know,  never  has  been  found.  In  1900,  through 
the  Naval  Institute  at  Annapolis,  Stoney  published  an 
account  himself. 

Stoney 's  name  is  as  closely  associated  with  this  region 
as  Allen  is  with  the  Tanana  and  the  Koyukuk.     The 


54  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

names  of  most  of  the  tributaries  are  his:  the  Reed  is 
named  for  one  of  his  companions,  the  Ambler  for  the 
surgeon  of  the  Jeannette,  who  died  in  the  Lena  delta. 
Lakes  Selby  and  Walker,  and  the  large  Lake  Chandler 
at  the  head  of  one  of  the  branches  of  the  Colville,  are  his 
names ;  the  Chipp  river  which  flows  into  the  Arctic  Ocean 
a  little  east  of  Point  Barrow  was  named  by  him  for  one 
of  the  officers  who  perished  on  the  Jeannette  expedi- 
tion. Perhaps  his  most  important  geographical  dis- 
covery is  that  of  Lake  Chandler,  for  in  the  region  just 
south  of  it  the  Kobuk,  the  Alatna,  the  Noatak,  the  John, 
and  one  branch  of  the  Colville,  all  head  together.  The 
map  of  this  whole  region  of  interlocking  drainages  came 
into  existence  from  his  labours. 

But  his  two  most  conspicuous  names  on  the  ordinary 
map,  by  an  odd  chance,  are  of  no  importance  whatever : 
the  existence  of  one  of  them,  "Zane  Pass,"  I  have  heard 
denied  more  than  once  in  the  position  in  which  he  places 
it,  and,  at  any  rate,  there  are  many  easy  passes  from  the 
Kobuk  to  the  Koyukuk,  and  the  other,  ''Fort  Cosmos," 
has  certainly  today  no  existence  at  all.  It  was  simply 
Stoney's  headquarters  camp,  named  for  a  club  in  San 
Francisco. 

Lieut.  Stoney  doubtless  did  excellent  work,  and  his 
surveys  are  notable  as  the  first  instrumental  surveys 
made  in  interior  Alaska,  but  I  do  not  think  he  belongs 
in  the  front  rank  of  our  explorers,  with  W.  H.  Dall  and 
Lieut.  Allen.  His  narrative  is  very  bald;  though  per- 
haps the  original  draft  that  was  lost  in  Washington  was 
more  interesting;  and  some  of  his  observations  are  as 
ill-founded  as  they  are  positive.  Here  is  his  deliverance 
upon  the  malamute  dog:  "they  obey  tolerably  well 
through  fear  and  not  affection,  for  there  is  no  affection 
in  any  Eskimo  dog's  nature."  As  my  mind  runs  back 
over  the  names  of  my  pet  malamutes,  as  I  go  to  the  door 
and  whistle  the  reigning  favourite — a  dog,  as  it  happens, 
from  that  very  region — and  he  bounds  up  and  muzzles 
against  my  face  and  nibbles  at  my  ear,  I  smile  at  our 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND   55 

naval  lieutenant's  pronouncement.  Let  us  be  thankful 
that  his  determined  attempt  to  change  the  name  of  the 
Kobuk  river  to  the  "Putnam"  was  a  failure.  Yet  am  I 
glad  that  the  name  of  Charles  Flint  Putnam  has  found 
place  in  Alaska  without  removing  an  important  native 
name.  It  has  been  put  upon  a  peak  of  an  island  of  the 
Alexander  archipelago,  and  there  commemorates  an  of- 
ficer of  the  Rodgers  who  was  carried  out  to  sea  on  an 
ice-floe  and  perished,  in  1880,  even  if  there  it  does  not 
commemorate  Stoney's  loyal  devotion  to  an  unfortunate 
brother  officer's  memory. 

The  travelling  was  now  rapid,  though  cold  river-bot- 
tom winds  rendered  it  none  too  pleasant.  We  made  up 
for  lost  time  on  the  smooth  ice  of  the  Kobuk  with  its 
light  sprinkling  of  snow.  Here  is  another  trapping  note 
in  my  diary  that  belongs  to  the  region  of  the  river;  we 
came  across  a  fine  fox  frantically  struggling  in  a  trap. 
As  Walter  approached  with  his  .22  to  shoot  it  through 
the  head,  it  seized  the  trap  in  its  teeth,  and  when  it  was 
dead  the  poor  little  beast's  tongue  was  frozen  to  the 
steel  of  the  trap.  There  is  Something  very  pitiful  to 
me  about  the  whole  business.  The  skin  of  the  fox  is  a 
beautiful  pelt,  and  this  was  a  handsome  fellow.  The 
vagaries  of  fashion  have  set  fox  as  the  favourite  fur 
just  now  and,  as  I  write,  I  hear  of  a  cross-fox  pelt  that 
would  have  brought  ten  or  twelve  dollars  five  years  ago 
bringing  upwards  of  an  hundred,  and  I  wonder  to  what 
greater  height  folly  and  extravagance  will  go.  With 
such  prices  as  stimulus,  fur  trapping  wdll  be  pushed  so 
intensively  that  in  a  little  while  the  whole  north  will  be 
utterly  stripped  and  the  animals  will  be  exterminated. 
Even  the  musk-rats  that  used  to  sell  for  ten  cents  apiece 
are  now  bringing  $1.50.  Easily  as  they  are  caught,  every 
lake  in  Alaska  will  be  cleared  of  them. 

When  we  left  our  night  quarters  of  Wednesday  the 
5th  December,  a  little  group  of  two  or  three  Eskimo 
dwellings  where  we  were  made  very  comfortable  and 
welcome,  AValter's  team,  instead  of  being  in  advance, 


56  A  WINTEE  CIRCUIT 

got  away  last,  and  instead  of  catching  up  and  passing 
us,  lagged  further  and  further  behind.  At  last  we 
stopped  and  waited  to  discover  what  was  the  matter,  and 
when  he  approached  we  found  that  one  of  his  dogs,  in- 
stead of  working  in  his  harness,  was  being  hauled  on  top 
of  the  sled.  There  had  been  much  barking  and  disturb- 
ance of  dogs  during  the  night,  but  since  all  our  teams 
were  stoutly  chained  I  had  not  worried  about  it.  Now 
it  appeared  that  one  of  our  dogs  had  broken  loose  and 
had  been  attacked  and  badly  torn  by  the  native  dogs  of 
the  place.  At  the  noon  stop  it  was  evident  that  the  dog 
would  not  live,  and  Walter  made  ready  to  shoot  him,  but 
even  as  the  dog  was  taken  off  the  sled  to  lead  away,  he 
died  and  the  merciful  shot  was  rendered  unnecessary. 
It  is  difficult  these  dark  and  cold  evenings  and  mornings 
to  make  sufficiently  sure  that  the  dogs  are  safely  chained. 
The  snow  clogs  the  snaps,  the  metal  itself  becomes  brit- 
tle in  low  temperatures  and  it  had  been  36  deg.  below 
zero  that  night,  one's  fingers  fumble  in  gloves,  and  yet 
the  naked  hand  must  be  but  very  sparingly  in  contact 
with  metal  or  there  will  be  frostbite.  Do  what  one  will, 
accidents  like  this  are  likely  to  happen.  I  was  sorry  we 
lost  "Moose,"  who  was  a  good,  hard-working  dog,  but  I 
looked  forward  to  supplying  his  place  with  a  fine  mala- 
mute  when  we  reached  the  coast. 

That  night  we  stayed  at  another  Eskimo  hut,  and  the 
occupant  thereof,  finding  himself  sleepless  during  the 
small  hours  of  the  morning,  relieved  the  tedium  of  his 
vigil  by  breaking  into  a  doleful  wailing  Eskimo  song. 
When  my  remonstrance  induced  him  to  cease,  some  grave 
domestic  mishap  in  a  family  of  small  pups  provoked 
another  prolonged  disturbance.  Children  and  pups  are 
the  most  privileged  members  of  an  Eskimo  household; 
if  they  do  not  cease  howling  or  whining  of  their  own 
free  will,  they  simply  keep  on;  no  one  tries  to  make 
them  stop  or  even  tells  them  to  stop ;  they  howl  or  whine 
themselves  to  sleep  ultimately. 

A  couple  of  hours  next  morning  brought  us  to  Shung- 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        57 

nak,  the  considerable  village  that  one  thinks  of  as  a  half- 
way station  in  a  journey  down  the  Kobuk,  though  in 
distance  it  is  much  less  than  that,  intending  to  spend  but 
the  rest  of  the  day  there.  The  urging  of  the  schoolmaster 
and  many  of  the  natives  of  the  place,  however,  overrode 
my  intent  and  we  lay  there  during  Saturday  and  Sunday 
as  well,  the  more  willingly  that  the  good  travelling  had 
brought  us  up  to  our  itinerary  again  and  the  prospect 
of  reaching  Point  Hope  for  Christmas  seemed  reasonably 
secure. 

Here  was  a  man,  school-teacher,  postmaster,  agricul- 
turist, general  superintendent  of  native  affairs,  who  with 
his  wife  and  children  had  lived  here  for  several  years 
and  at  other  Eskimo  points  several  more.  Of  more  edu- 
cation along  some  lines  than  others,  he  seemed  specially 
proficient  in  mathematics  and  astronomy,  and  he  had 
taken  advantage  of  a  favourable  situation  to  produce 
what  I  had  never  seen  in  my  life  before,  a  set  of  genuine 
photographs  of  the  aurora  borealis.  Postcard  pictures 
of  the  aurora  may  indeed  be  bought  at  Dawson  and 
Whitehorse,  but  they  are  produced  to  supply  a  tourist 
demand  and  are  admittedly  ''faked."  I  had  read  that 
the  thing  had  actually  been  done  and  had  seen  a  series 
reproduced  in  one  of  the  scientific  magazines,  but  I  think 
I  had  lingering  doubts.  The  latest  books  of  Polar  ex- 
ploration, opulent  beyond  example  with  the  results  of 
the  most  expert  photography,  both  in  black  and  white 
and  in  natural  colours, — I  refer  to  Scott's  and  Shackle- 
ton's  and  Mawson's  sumptuous  volumes, — although  re- 
plete with  observations  of  the  aurora,  have  no  attempt 
at  photographic  representation  thereof.  I  remembered 
that  Mr.  Frederick  Jackson  during  his  three  years  in 
Franz  Josef  Land  attempted  again  and  again  to  secure 
negatives  of  the  most  brilliant  displays  without  result, 
and  I  had  myself  made  many  fruitless  attempts.  But  I 
had  not  made  enough,  nor  had  Mr.  Jackson.  Here  was 
an  enthusiastic  amateur  who  would  not  be  denied;  who 
tried  a  new  combination  of  diaphragm  and  length  of  ex- 


58  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

posure  after  every  failure,  and  kept  at  it  until  he  suc- 
ceeded. He  had  a  dozen  or  more  really  good  negatives, 
besides  several  score  of  poor  ones,  all  in  their  natural 
state,  quite  untouched,  as  I  determined  with  a  magnify- 
ing glass,  and  he  showed  me  with  pride  a  letter  from  the 
director  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute  warmly  commend- 
ing his  work,  asking  for  more  specimens  and  offering 
assistance  in  the  matter  of  apparatus  should  it  be  de- 
sired. 

The  fascinating  problem  of  auroral  photography,  he 
told  me,  when  once  a  proper  exposure  had  been  arrived 
at,  is  ''Will  the  arch  or  the  streamers  hold  steady  long 
enough  to  make  an  impression  on  the  plate?"  The  light 
is  very  faint.  In  the  darkness  of  the  midnight  sky  it 
may  seem  brilliant,  but  almost  always  any  stars  that  are 
visible  at  all  are  visible  through  it.  There  must  there- 
fore be  "a  continuance  in  one  stay"  of  sufficient  dura- 
tion for  the  light  to  affect  the  silver  salts  of  the  plate,  or, 
however  brilliant  the  appearance,  there  will  be  no  photo- 
graph. Now,  next  to  luminosity  itself,  the  special  char- 
acteristic of  the  aurora  is  its  whimsical  eccentricity  of 
movement.  It  darts  and  flashes.  While  you  are  regard- 
ing it  in  one  quarter  of  the  heavens,  suddenly  it  makes 
its  appearance  in  another ;  while  you  are  adjusting  your 
camera  to  an  exhibition  near  the  horizon,  behold  it  has 
climbed  to  the  zenith.  Yet  now  and  then  one  holds  steady 
long  enough  to  be  photographed  if  a  man  will  but  have 
the  patience  to  be  continually  disappointed  and  yet  not 
despair. 

Consider,  too,  that  photographing  the  aurora  is,  un- 
avoidably, an  outdoor  business.  I  suppose  that  it  could 
be  done  through  large  windows  of  glass  that  should  be 
optically  perfect  planes,  but  our  windows  in  the  north 
are  small  and  the  glass  of  the  cheap,  distorting  kind,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  frost  that  commonly  accumulates  upon 
them.  And  the  clear  skies  that  afford  the  only  oppor- 
tunity are  almost  always  accompanied  by  extreme  cold. 
Once  at  a  dinner  following  an  address,  I  was  asked  by  a 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        59 

college  professor  if  I  would  not  carry  back  to  the  north 
with  me  a  bulky  instrument  for  spectroscopic  analysis, 
haul  it  around  all  the  winter  in  my  sled  and  endeavour  to 
discover  whether  the  lines  of  a  certain  element  were 
present  in  the  auroral  light  or  not.  He  was  so  naively 
unaware  of  the  conditions  under  which  such  an  investi- 
gation must  be  pursued,  and  of  the  utter  impracticability 
of  the  whole  proposal,  that  I  was  not  even  flattered  at  my 
supposed  capacity  for  it,  and  said  no  more  than  that  I 
was  sorry  that  I  must  decline.  I  remember  that  he  had 
produced  or  embraced  a  theory  of  the  cause  of  the  aurora 
which  depended  in  some  way  upon  the  fact  that  the  most 
brilliant  displays  almost  always  precede  midnight,  just 
as  Sir  John  Franklin  thought  that  his  observations  in- 
dictated  a  greater  frequency  during  the  waning  moon, 
neither  of  which  beliefs  has  any  foundation  as  far  as 
my  own  observation  goes.  It  is  dangerous  to  generalise 
upon  insufficient  particulars. 

It  has  been  mentioned  that  the  situation  at  Shungnak 
was  specially  favourable  for  observation  of  the  aurora. 
Due  south  from  the  place  the  mountains  break  down  en- 
tirely into  a  broad  level  gap,  through  which,  doubtless, 
at  one  time  a  glacier  flowed,  for  the  banks  of  the  river 
in  the  neighbourhood  are  of  solid  ice  only  lightly  covered 
with  humus  and  moss.  With  the  smooth  river  surface 
for  an  immediate  foreground  and  this  gap  giving  free 
scope  down  to  the  distant  horizon,  the  photographer  com- 
manded the  skies  as  few  spots  that  I  know  would  have 
enabled  him  to  do. 

The  reader  may  imagine  this  man,  his  day's  work 
done,  taking  advantage  of  any  night  in  which  the  north- 
ern lights  w^ere  active,  setting  up  his  camera,  turning  it 
to  right  and  left,  upwards  and  downwards,  ''lo  here" 
and  "lo  there"  as  the  dancing  radiances  mock  him,  wait- 
ing and  watching  hour  after  hour  in  the  cold,  night  after 
night,  eagerly  developing  his  rare  exposures,  accumulat- 
ing failure  upon  failure,  and  at  length  succeeding;  and 
then  prosecuting  his  success  with  renewed  zeal  and  in- 


60  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

terest  until  he  had  secured  his  collection  of  photographs. 
There  is  to  my  mind  something  very  admirable  about 
this  patient  and  resolute  devotion. 

Naturally  I  put  to  him  the  query  about  the  sound  that 
some  have  maintained  accompanies  certain  sweeping 
movements  of  the  aurora,  because  his  lonely,  silent  vigils 
must  have  given  excellent  opportunities  for  hearing  it, 
if  such  sound  there  ever  be,  and  I  was  not  surprised  at 
his  decided  negative.  For  years  I  have  had  an  interest 
in  this  matter,  born  of  a  heated  controversy  I  was  pres- 
ent at  soon  after  coming  to  Alaska.  I  have  tried  to  keep 
an  open  mind,  listening  intently  many  and  many  a 
time,  winter  after  winter,  on  the  bank  of  the  Yukon,  in 
still,  cold  weather,  when  the  heavens  were  alive  with  the 
charging  squadrons  of  the  northern  lights,  sometimes  so 
swift  and  so  enormous  in  their  sweep  across  the  whole 
firmament  that  it  seemed  as  though  in  all  reason  there 
must  be  some  resultant  sound — ^but  there  was  not  the 
slightest.  Then  in  the  course  of  the  re-reading  of  some 
scores  of  Arctic  books,  I  began  to  note  down  the  testi- 
mony of  their  authors,  pro  and  con.  I  traced  the  begin- 
ning of  what  I  am  bold  enough  to  call  this  auricular  de- 
lusion to  Samuel  Hearne,  who  in  his  famous  journey  to 
the  Coppermine  river  in  1771  says,  ''I  can  i^ositively  af- 
firm that  in  still  nights  I  have  frequently  heard  them 
(i.  e.  the  northern  lights)  make  a  rustling  and  cracking 
noise  like  the  waving  of  a  large  flag  in  a  fresh  gale  of 
wind."  * 

Now  although  Hearne 's  bona  fides  has  been  ques- 
tioned and  his  astronomical  observations  cannot  be  de- 
fended, I  am  very  loath  to  cast  any  further  discredit 
vupon  a  gentle  and  unassuming  character  who  has  pro- 
duced one  of  the  best  narratives  of  the  northern  wilds. 
Indeed  I  would  rather  venture  the  suggestion,  in  defence 
of  what  has  been  called  the  deliberate  untruth  of  his 


*  Hearne's  Journey  to  the  Northern  Ocean:  Champlain  Society  edition, 
p.  235,  admirably  edited  by  J.  B.  Tyrrell,  the  only  man  who  has  ever 
crossed  the  country  described  by  Hearne  from  that  day  to  this. 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       61 

statement,  that  he  saw  the  sun  at  midnight  at  the  Bloody 
Falls  on  the  15th  July,  that  by  an  unusual  high  refrac- 
tion it  may  have  been  a  fact.  At  Fort  Yukon,  which  is 
in  66°  34',  I  have  seen  the  midnight  sun  on  the  5th  July 
by  standing  on  a  fence  post,  and  as  the  Bloody  Falls  are 
more  than  a  degree  further  to  the  north,  I  think  he  may 
possibly  have  seen  the  midnight  sun  ten  days  later.  De 
Long  records  an  extraordinary  refraction  by  which  the 
Jeannette's  people  saw  the  sun  on  the  9th  November,  al- 
though it  had  altogether  disappeared  from  their  latitude 
on  6th  November. 

Thomas  Simpson,  whose  narrative  ranks  little  below 
Hearne's  in  my  esteem,  quotes  one  of  his  companions 
(Retch)  as  having  distinctly  heard  the  aurora,  and  adds 
^'I  can  therefore  no  longer  entertain  any  doubt  of  a  fact 
uniformly  asserted  by  the  natives,  insisted  on  by  Hearne, 
by  my  friend  Mr.  Dease,  and  by  many  of  the  oldest  resi- 
dents in  the  fur  countries,  though  I  have  not  had  the 
good  fortune  to  hear  it  myself."  This  is  all  the  first- 
hand evidence  I  have  been  able  to  procure  on  the  affirm- 
ative. 

The  records  of  the  polar  voyages  lean  much  to  the  other 
side,  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest.  I  have  a  long  list  of 
extracts,  but  it  is  not  worth  adducing  them,  for  the  matter 
seemed  to  be  definitely  settled  by  what  I  read  in  David 
Thompson's  Narrative  of  His  Explorations  in  Western 
America*  When  wintering  at  Reindeer  Lake  in  what 
is  now  Northern  Saskatchewan,  in  1795,  he  tried  an  ex- 
periment which  seems  to  me  quite  conclusive.  His  com- 
panions declared  that  they  heard  a  sound  accompanying 
the  rapid  movements  of  a  very  brilliant  auroral  display, 

*  Champlain  Society,  Toronto,  191G,  p.  15.  If  the  Society  had  done 
nothing  beyond  recovering  and  publishing  this  long  and  most  valuable 
manuscript  narrative  of  journeys  and  surveys  from  1784  to  1812  it  would 
have  justified  its  existence.  It  is  said  that  Washington  Irving  tried  to 
secure  the  manuscript  for  use  in  writing  his  Astoria  but  would  not  pay 
enough  to  warrant  its  sale.  The  accomplished  editor  of  this  volume, 
J.  B.  Tyrrell,  who  also  edited  Hoarne,  himself  a  noted  surveyor  and 
explorer,  calls  Thompson  "  one  of  the  world's  greatest  geographers,"  and, 
I  think,  after  a  careful  reading  of  it,  with  justice. 


62  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

so  he  blindfolded  them  by  turns  and  they  became  sensible 
that  they  did  not  hear  the  motion  when  they  could  no 
longer  see  it,  though  when  the  bandages  were  removed 
they  thought  they  heard  it  again.  It  is  an  experiment 
that  anyone  who  thinks  he  hears  sound  accompanying 
this  phenomenon  (and  many  people  so  think)  may  try 
for  himself,  and  I  believe  that  the  result  will  in  every 
case  be  the  same.  At  all  events  this  experiment  has 
seemed  so  decisive  to  me  ever  since  I  had  the  good  for- 
tune to  secure  a  copy  of  Thompson  that  I  have  dismissed 
the  thing  from  my  mind  as  any  longer  a  moot  question, 
and,  as  I  said,  am  emboldened  to  set  down  the  sound  as 
a  delusion  of  the  ear. 

Let  me  describe,  in  concluding  this  digression,  how 
very  nearly  I  once  came  to  hearing  the  sound  of  the 
aurora.  I  was  standing  one  cold,  still  night  on  the  river 
bank,  with  the  wide  stretch  of  the  frozen  Yukon  before 
me,  gazing  at  a  majestic  draped  aurora  which  was  rapidly 
unfolding  its  fringed  curtains  across  the  skies  and  gath- 
ering them  up  again,  advancing  towards  me  and  reced- 
ing, dropping  towards  the  earth  and  rising  again.  And 
just  as  one  of  its  sweeps  approached  nearer  to  me  than 
ever  before,  I  heard  a  soft  distinct  sound,  not  like  the 
rustling  of  silk  but  like  a  deep  suspiration.  I  was  startled 
and  surprised.  Had  I  then  been  wrong  all  these  years? 
Was  there  after  all  a  sound  accompanying  the  aurora? 
Again  and  again  the  curtain  approached  without  sound, 
though  it  did  not  approach  again  so  closely  as  when  I 
had  heard  the  sound.  Still  standing,  intently  listening, 
again  I  heard  the  prolonged  sigh-like  sound,  but  this 
time  not  coinciding  with  a  movement  of  the  aurora  at 
all.  I  looked  eagerly  about  me  for  a  source  from  which 
it  could  have  arisen,  and  presently,  hidden  by  a  bush,  I 
saw  a  sleeping  dog,  who,  whether  or  not  he  ''urged  in 
dreams  the  forest  race"  like  the  stag-hounds  in  Brank- 
some  Hall,  was  from  time  to  time  emitting  deep  breath- 
ings, once  of  which  had  happened  to  coincide  with  a 
specially  near  approach  of  the  auroral  curtain. 


FEOM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       63 

Mr.  Sickler  had  been  intelligently  active  in  other  ways ; 
he  had  made  a  star-map  of  the  northern  heavens,  show- 
ing those  constellations  that  appear  above  the  Arctic 
Circle;  he  had  gathered  some  valuable  data  regarding 
the  migrations  of  the  inland  Eskimos  who  occupy  the  Ko- 
buk,  and  had  satisfied  himself  that  the  Kobuk  used  to  be 
occupied  by  Indians  whom  the  Eskimos  drove  out.  "Wal- 
ter and  I,  knowing  pretty  well  the  distance  we  had  cov- 
ered by  the  route  we  had  followed,  had  discussed  how 
far  we  had  come  in  a  straight  line.  Shungnak  being  al- 
most in  the  same  latitude  as  Fort  Yukon,  the  distance 
depended  upon  the  value  of  a  degree  of  longitude  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Arctic  Circle,  and  I  found  myself 
unable  to  determine  that  value.  This  school-teacher, 
however,  quickly  worked  it  out  with  a  pencil  and  paper 
at  about  twenty-eight  miles,  as  I  recall  his  figures,  and 
when,  later,  I  had  an  opportunity  of  consulting  Traut- 
wein's  tables,  I  found  his  result  correct.  It  is  not  quite 
as  easy  a  problem  as  perhaps  it  looks. 

His  Eskimo-migration  enquiries  had  brought  him  into 
communication  with  another  section  of  the  Smithsonian 
Institution,  and  the  insatiable  Custodian  of  the  Charnel 
House,  boasting  of  his  grisly  treasures,  had  urgently 
pleaded  for  more  skulls.  There  was  a  picture  in  my 
juvenile  Pilgrim's  Progress  (which  must  have  been  ad- 
mirably illustrated  from  the  impressions  it  left)  of  Giant 
Despair,  lurking  at  the  gate  of  Doubting  Castle,  with  a 
great  pile  of  human  skulls  beside  him,  picked  clean.  So 
do  I  picture  this  sexton-scientist  of  the  Smithsonian,  add- 
ing to  his  piles  as  a  miser  to  his  bags  of  money,  gloat- 
ing over  them  and  counting  them  again  and  again.  Or 
if  my  reader  resent  the  extravagance  of  this  comparison 
he  must  allow  me  the  lines  of  the  Ingoldshy  Legends: 

"And  thus  of  their  owner  to  speak  began 
As  he  ordered  you  home  in  haste, 
No  doubt  he's  a  highly  respectable  man 
But  I  eau't  say  much  for  his  taste!" 


64  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

I  wish  that  a  law  might  be  made  that  the  skulls  of  all 
persons  who  had  engaged  in  this  ghoulish  body-snatching 
together  with  the  skulls  of  their  sisters  and  their  cousins 
and  their  aunts,  should,  upon  their  decease,  be  ^'care- 
fully boiled  to  remove  all  the  flesh"  (as  the  circular  of 
instructions  ran)  and  then  added  to  the  museum 
collections!  So  might  "the  punishment  fit  the  crime," 
and  professors  of  the  "dismal  science"  of  anthro- 
pology be  reminded  that  even  Eskimos  have  natural 
feelings. 

"While  we  were  at  Shungnak  the  monthly  mail  came, 
and  it  brought  Mr,  Sickler  a  letter,  which  he  handed  to 
me  to  read.  It  was  from  one  of  his  official  superiors,  in 
reply  to  an  enquiry  made  several  months  before,  as  to 
whether  he  would  be  retained  at  Shungnak  for  another 
year ;  a  not  unnatural  enquiry  for  a  man  with  a  wife  and 
family.  The  letter  said,  curtly  and  harshly  enough,  that 
the  writer  could  not  answer  that  question  at  present,  but 
that  if  Mr.  Sickler  were  retained  it  would  not  be  because 
he  had  made  photographs  of  the  aurora.  "What  I  am 
interested  in,"  the  letter  continued,  "is  the  development 
of  agriculture  in  the  Kobuk  valley."  I  knew  the  official 
who  wrote  the  letter  (he  is  not  always  so  harsh  and  curt) 
and  I  asked  Mr.  Sickler,  who  was  dejected  by  it,  if  he 
would  mind  my  answering  it.  Having  received  permis- 
sion I  wrote  that  I  had  been  feasting  upon  Mr.  Sickler 's 
vegetables,  his  carrots  and  turnips,  his  potatoes  and  cab- 
bages ;  that  so  little  snow  was  on  the  ground  that  I  was 
able  to  see  for  myself  with  surprise  how  extensively  gar- 
dening operations  had  been  carried  on  in  the  village  dur- 
ing the  previous  summer,  and  that  I  was  sure  that  a 
moment's  reflection  would  convince  him  that  preoccupa- 
tion with  the  aurora  borealis  could  hardly  interfere  very 
seriously  with  the  cultivation  of  the  soil.  He  had  laid 
himself  open  by  that  vicious  thrust  and,  presuming  to 
take  the  encounter  upon  myself,  it  gave  me  much  satis- 
faction to  get  in  so  clean  a  riposte.  Seriously,  one 
would  think  that  such  work,  outside  his  duties  though  it 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        65 

were,  as  Sickler  had  been  doing  at  Shungnak,  would  be 
matter  of  pride  to  the  Bureau  of  Education. 

There  was  other  more  contentious  matter  in  real  ques- 
tion, but  we  will  leave  that  till  we  get  down  to  its  seat 
near  the  mouth  of  the  river. 

The  mail  brought  also  a  bulletin  from  the  mining  town 
of  Candle  on  the  Seward  peninsula  and  Mr.  Sickler  an- 
nounced the  war  news  to  the  congregation  after  evening 
service  on  Sunday,  with  explanations  excellently  well 
adapted  to  native  capacity.  The  news  was  gloomy,  as 
all  the  news  of  the  winter  was,  but  the  village  was  fer- 
vently loyal  and  sang  its  patriotic  songs  with  enthusiasm. 
Northern  Italy  was  overrun;  Venice  was  threatened; 
Cambrai  had  been  retaken  from  Byng;  but  Shungnak 
was  confident  and  undismayed. 

On  Monday  morning  the  Sicklers  were  up  I  know  not 
how  early;  they  had  a  fine  breakfast  for  us  at  five,  and 
at  seven  we  were  loaded  and  lashed  and  gone,  bound  for 
a  cabin  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ambler  full  forty  miles  away. 
Athlanuk  stayed  here,  but  Oola  and  his  team  were  to  keep 
us  company  nearly  to  the  mouth  of  the  river.  I  gathered 
that  the  girl  he  had  expected  to  find  at  Shungnak  was 
gone  with  her  parents  to  Noorvik,  although  he  would  not 
admit  that  her  presence  or  absence  determined  his  move- 
ments. The  first  twelve  miles  was  on  the  river  and  went 
well  enough ;  there  followed  a  portage  of  twenty-four  or 
twenty-five  miles,  and  once  more  the  light  snow  that 
speeded  our  river  travel  hindered  us  across  country. 
When  we  reached  the  wind-swept  river  again  it  was  pitch 
dark,  and  since  the  cabin  we  sought  was  not  on  the  main 
river  but  on  a  slough,  it  was  essential  we  keep  the  trail, 
and  the  trail  was  difficult  to  follow,  so  that  it  took  us 
two  hours  to  make  the  remaining  four  or  five  miles  to 
Happy  Jack's  Place,  where  we  were  received,  very 
weary  after  thirteen  hours'  travel,  with  all  native  hos- 
pitality and  kindness.  There  was  no  man  at  home,  but 
the  woman  came  out  with  a  lantern  and  helped  our  teams 
up  a  very  steep  bank  and  helped  to  unload. 


66  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

The  next  day  we  hoped  to  pass  the  mouth  of  the  Hunt 
river  and  reach  a  cabin  some  distance  beyond,  a  run  of 
nearly  fifty  miles,  nearly  all  on  the  river;  but  when  we 
had  travelled  perhaps  thirty-five  miles  and  had  reached 
that  confluence,  there  sprang  up  a  strong  head  wind,  and 
since  all  snow  was  swept  away  we  found  it  increasingly 
difficult,  and  at  last  impossible,  to  make  any  way  on 
the  glare  ice.  The  wind  carried  dogs  and  sled  where 
it  would,  so  we  went  to  the  bank  and  made  camp  in  a 
clump  of  trees,  a  very  pleasant  camp  with  plenty  of 
time  for  study  after  supper.  I  felt  a  little  sorry  for 
Oola;  our  Shakespeare  left  him  out  altogether,  and  I 
should  have  liked  exceedingly  well  to  have  been  of  some 
service  to  him,  but  the  demands  of  Walter's  preparation 
were  peremptory.  I  knew  not  what  plays  of  Shake- 
speare would  be  required  at  entrance  to  college  and  I  was 
resolved  to  read  all  the  important  ones  with  him,  and 
read  them  thoroughly. 

The  wind  that  continued  all  night  fell  in  the  morn- 
ing and  we  passed  rapidly  over  several  miles  of  glare 
ice  that  we  should  never  have  been  able  to  pass  with 
a  high  wind  against  us.  We  learned  that  this  stretch  of 
the  Kobuk  is  noted  for  its  windiness,  like  many  a  stretch 
of  the  Yukon  and  the  Tanana.  Coming  in  from  the  north 
through  a  gap  in  the  mountains,  the  valley  of  the  Hunt 
river  forms  a  natural  channel  for  air-movements,  and 
snow,  we  were  assured,  is  rarely  allowed  to  lie  on  the  ice 
in  the  vicinity  of  its  junction  with  the  valley  of  the  Ko- 
buk.   Eiver  confluences  are  always  likely  to  be  windy. 

Another  day  of  quick  travel  brought  us  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Salmon  river,  and  on  the  next  day  by  ten  o'clock 
we  were  at  the  coal  mine  twenty  miles  below  the  Salmon, 
where,  twelve  years  previously,  I  had  found  a  man  pick- 
ing away  at  a  coal  seam  in  the  bluffs,  gloomily  confident 
that  it  would  very  shortly  play  out.  It  did  not  play  out; 
it  developed  into  a  coal  mine;  and  a  gold  mining  camp 
springing  unexpectedly  up  another  twenty-five  miles  or 
so  down  the  river,  gave  a  sufficient  market  for  coal  during 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        67 

the  last  nine  or  ten  years  to  provide  him  with  a  reason- 
able competency,  I  judge.  Such  are  the  vicissitudes  of 
prospecting.  I  well  remember,  and  I  have  recorded  else- 
where, this  man's  determination  to  abandon  the  place  in 
the  spring,  and  his  petulant  references  to  the  obstinacy 
of  his  partner  who  wished  to  remain.  ''I  told  him  it 
would  pinch  out  and  now  it's  a-pinchin'  and  I  hope  when 
he  comes  back  he'll  be  satisfied  and  quit."  It  was  pleas- 
ant to  recall  to  this  man,  as  we  drank  the  steaming  coffee 
he  had  ready  when  we  arrived  (for  he  had  seen  our 
teams  on  the  river  and  had  set  the  pot  on  the  stove  and 
a  dish  of  meat  in  the  oven  immediately),  his  despondency 
on  my  previous  visit,  and  we  laughed  over  it  together. 
Yet  had  not  gold  been  found  on  the  Squirrel  river  (of 
which  there  was  then  no  sign)  I  do  not  think  his  coal 
mine,  however  productive,  could  have  been  profitable. 

Kyana,  which  in  the  Eskimo  tongue  means  "Thank 
you,"  is  the  town  at  the  mouth  of  the  Squirrel  river 
which  supplies  this  camp;  new  in  years  but  already  old 
and  decadent  though  not  yet  quite  derelict.  A  couple  of 
stores,  a  saloon  or  two  feverishly  trembling  on  the  verge 
of  extinction  as  the  1st  January  and  the  prohibition  law 
approached  together,  a  commissioner  and  a  marshal,  and 
a  large  assortment  of  half-breed  children,  wxre  its  promi- 
nent features.  Here,  for  the  first  time  since  leaving 
Bettles,  and  for  the  last  time  in  our  journey,  we  stayed 
at  a  roadhouse.  It  was  comfortable  and  clean,  but  there 
was  neither  leisure  nor  privacy  for  our  studies,  and  that 
night  they  defaulted  entirely.  The  whole  population 
dropped  in  upon  us  from  time  to  time  during  the  evening 
and  I  found  myself  not  without  acquaintances  and 
friends ;  some  from  Candle  who  remembered  my  one  visit 
to  that  place,  some  from  the  Koyukuk. 

Here  by  all  right  and  reason  I  should  have  stayed  and 
gathered  the  people  and  done  what  little  was  in  my  power 
for  them,  and  so,  were  this  one  of  my  ordinary  journeys, 
I  should  have  done ;  but  my  prime  object  this  time  was  to 
reach  Point  Hope  for  Christmas,  and  Christmas  was  but 


68  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

twelve  days  off.  Could  we  cover  the  ninety  or  one  hun- 
dred miles  to  Kotzebue  in  the  next  two  days,  we  could 
lie  over  Sunday  at  that  place,  have  a  clear  week  for  the 
journey  up  the  coast,  and  still  arrive  a  day  or  so  ahead 
of  time.  But  that  left  little  margin  for  the  vicissitudes 
of  Arctic  travel,  and  we  could  certainly  not  reduce 
it  any  further.  Contrary  wind,  which  often  hinders 
travel  in  the  interior,  often  forbids  it  altogether  on  the 
coast. 

There  was  another  new  place,  twenty-five  miles  beyond 
Kyana,  which  caUed  even  louder  for  a  stop,  and  called 
in  vain.  Before  we  left  the  Koyukuk  we  had  heard 
strange  wild  rumours  of  Noorvik,  the  government-Quaker 
establishment  near  the  mouth  of  the  Kobuk,  which  was 
even  reported  to  have  a  wireless  telegraph  of  its  own 
and  electric  lights,  and  all  down  the  river  we  had  heard 
fresh  accounts,  growing  more  definite  as  we  came  the 
nearer. 

Noorvik  is  a  new  and  somewhat  daring  experiment  of 
the  Bureau  of  Education,  an  experiment  in  Eskimo  con- 
centration. Now  to  anyone  familiar,  even  by  reading, 
with  Arctic  conditions,  it  would  seem  that  for  self- 
preservation  and  subsistence  it  is  necessary  that  the 
Eskimos  should  scatter.  The  officers  of  the  bureau,  quite 
as  weU  aware  of  this  as  any  others  can  be,  are  trying  by 
the  extension  and  stressing  of  the  reindeer  industry,  by 
the  encouragement  of  the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  by  the 
introduction  of  new  industries,  to  overset  the  disadvan- 
tages of  concentration.  Situated  near  the  head  of  the 
delta  of  the  Kobuk,  the  place  seems  an  eligible  one  for 
fresh- water  fishing;  it  is  within  the  timber  country, 
though  not  far  enough  within  it,  one  thinks,  for  good 
trees,  and  it  is  still  near  enough  to  salt  water  '*to  satisfy 
the  hunger  of  generations  for  the  sea  and  the  seal"  as 
the  teacher's  report  runs.  Most  of  the  people  of  the  vil- 
lage of  Deering  on  Kotzebue  Sound  were  removed  hither 
at  the  government  expense  two  or  three  years  ago, 
I  will  not  say  forcibly,  but  certainly  with  great  pressure, 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        69 

the  legitimacy  of  which  has  been  hotly  questioned,  and 
every  effort  is  made  to  induce  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Kobuk  river  itself  to  gather  and  settle  here. 

A  large  schoolhouse,  boasting  a  tower  with  an  illu- 
minated clock  (much  the  finest  I  have  seen  in  Alaska), 
a  sawmill,  an  electric  light  plant,  a  wireless  telegraph 
station,  have  all  been  established.  The  report  from 
which  I  have  quoted  insists,  rather  pathetically,  as  I 
think,  upon  the  value  of  the  electric  light  in  the  ''uplift" 
of  the  natives.  ''In  the  semi-darkness  of  the  candle  or 
the  seal-oil  lamp  the  weird  fancies  and  ghostly  supersti- 
tions of  the  by-gone  days  flourished,"  it  says.  One  is 
reminded  of  Henry  Labouchere's  saying  of  many  years 
ago,  that  the  English  House  of  Lords  had  somehow  man- 
aged to  survive  the  electric  light  but  he  did  not  see  how 
it  could  survive  the  telephone.  I  suppose  there  exist 
more  ignorance  and  superstition  and  general  degradation 
under  the  glare  of  the  electric  lights  of  New  York  or 
Chicago  or  London  than  rush  light  or  tallow  candle  ever 
glimmered  upon  since  the  world  began ;  such  things  have 
nothing  to  do  with  "uplift"  or  Germany  would  be  the 
most  uplifted  country  on  earth.  They  are  simply  other 
matters,  and  only  a  confusion  of  thought  connects  them. 

The  real  issue  of  the  whole  experiment  is,  of  course, 
the  school.  A  school  at  Noorvik  with  an  hundred  children 
in  attendance  can  do  better  work  at  much  less  cost  than 
half  a  dozen  little  schools  scattered  up  and  down  the 
river  and  the  coast.  That  is  the  real  reason  for  it.  Here 
also,  in  part,  was  the  real  issue  with  Mr.  Sickler  at 
Shungnak.  His  people  make  a  reasonably  good  living, 
are  attached  to  their  village  and  are  making  good  prog- 
ress along  the  desired  lines.  He  does  not  see  why  they 
should  bo  persuaded,  or  cajoled  as  he  would  probably 
put  it,  into  going  somewhere  else.  That  was  part  of  it; 
now  I  must  deal  with  the  other  part. 

The  other  part  is  connected  with  religious  matters  and 
it  is  not  at  all  necessary  to  make  apology  for  introducing 
them  even  in  a  book  not  specifically  religious,  because  to 


70  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ignore  them  would  be  to  ignore  an  essential  factor  of  all 
native  problems.     It  is  generally  known  that  when  the 
Alaskan  Bureau  of  Education  began  seriously  to  attack 
the  task  of  the  education  of  the  natives,  it  accepted  the 
parcelling  out  of  the  country  amongst  the  various  Chris- 
tian bodies  which  had  already  more  or  less  fortuitously 
taken  place.    The  Presbyterians  were  at  work  along  the 
southeastern  coast  and  at  Point  Barrow,  the  Episco- 
palians occupied  the  Yukon  river  and  Point  Hope,  the 
Methodists  had  some  work  on  the  Aleutian  Islands,  the 
Moravians  on  the  Kuskokwin,  the  Swedish  Lutherans  on 
Norton  Sound,  and  the  California  Society  of  Friends  on 
Kotzebue  Sound.     Because  the  Kobuk  river  flows  into 
Kotzebue  Sound  the  Friends  claimed  the  Kobuk  river 
and  its  inhabitants,  and  the  bureau  has  recognized  that 
claim.    Accordingly  its  Noorvik  experiment  is  under  the 
auspices  of  this  sect,  which,  in  the  main,  evades  the  ex- 
pense of  maintaining  missionaries  of  its  ovm  by  securing 
their  appointment  as  government  school-teachers.    Now 
the  attitude  of  the  Quakers  towards  war  is  well  known, 
and  it  was  reported  to  me  again  and  again,  by  white  men 
and  by  natives,  that  the  Eskimos  on  the  Kobuk  were 
being  induced  to  settle  at  Noorvik  on  the  plea  that  if 
they  did  not  they  would  soon  be  taken  away  to  fight  for 
the  government,  while  if  they  came  to  Noorvik  and  joined 
the  Quaker  community  they  would  never  be  required  to 
fight  but  would  be  protected  against  all  enemies  by  that 
same  government.    I  cannot  vouch  for  this,  but  it  was 
told  me  so  repeatedly  that  I  am  compelled  to  believe 
there  was  some  foundation  for  it;  one  Eskimo  family 
with  whom  we  stayed  up  the  river,  gave  it  as  the  reason 
for  their  intention  of  removing  thither. 

It  is  easy  to  be  seen  that  this  attitude  was  calculated 
to  rouse  indignation  in  any  patriotic  breast.  Not  all  the 
white  men  on  the  Kobuk  were  patriotic;  there  was  the 
usual  sprinkling  of  rabid  and  bitter  Bolsheviks  who 
talked  about  a  '^ capitalistic  war."  Alaska  sends  out 
more  insane  men  every  year  in  proportion  to  her  popula- 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND        71 

tion  than  any  other  country  on  earth — and  sometimes  it 
takes  one  form  and  sometimes  another.  But  the  greater 
part  were  intensely  patriotic  and  very  resentful  of  this 
attitude  of  the  agents  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  con- 
spicuous amongst  them  being  Sickler.  The  feeling  was 
aggravated  by  the  circumstance  that  the  missionary- 
teacher  at  Noorvik  was  a  German. 

I  have  tried  to  deal  with  this  thing  as  gently  and  im- 
partially as  possible.  The  usual  complaints  against 
missionaries  that  one  hears  from  white  men  do  not, 
it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  make  much  impression 
upon  me.  I  know  that  very  often  the  measure  of  the 
unpopularity  of  missionaries  with  certain  classes  is  the 
measure  of  their  usefulness.  The  memory  of  many 
a  conflict  of  my  own  is  still  vivid,  and  I  have  often 
thought  that  the  main  matter  was  well  summed  up  by 
an  indignant  deck  hand  on  a  steamboat  during  our  fight 
at  Fort  Yukon  some  years  ago:  ''Why,  it's  got  so  at 
that  place  that  a  man  can't  give  a  squaw  a  drink  of 
whiskey  and  take  her  out  in  the  brush  without  getting 
into  trouble!"  Moreover  in  earlier  writings  I  have  set 
forth  an  appreciation  of  the  efforts  of  the  Society  of 
Friends  in  this  very  region. 

Other  complaints  there  were  of  intolerance  that  sound 
strange  to  the  ears  of  one  acquainted  with  the  history  of 
this  singular  sect,  perhaps  in  the  past  the  most  generally 
despised  and  persecuted  of  all  Christian  bodies.  Tobacco 
smoking  is  anathema  to  them,  and  abstinence  from  it  is, 
as  nearly  as  they  can  make  it,  a  condition  of  residence  at 
Noorvik.  They  will  not  permit  the  marriage  of  one  of 
their  girls  to  an  Eskimo  not  of  their  professed  company, 
and  a  man  who  has  been  baptized  must  publicly  renounce 
his  baptism  before  he  wiU  be  accepted  as  a  suitor.  While 
again  I  do  not  state  this  of  my  own  knowledge  I  think 
it  is  true:  again  and  again  in  the  mournful  history  of 
Christian  divisions  a  persecuted  and  intolerated  sect  has 
in  its  turn  become  persecuting  and  intolerant.  "Setting 
a  beggar  on  horseback"  has  application  to   spiritual 


72  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

as  well  as  social  pride.  But  it  is  the  alliance  with 
the  government  and  the  opportunity  which  that  alli- 
ance gives  for  the  enforcement  of  strange  and  peculiar 
tenets  which  is  the  chief  cause  of  irritation,  and  it  affords 
another  illustration,  were  another  illustration  needed,  of 
the  mistake  and  unwisdom  of  such  alliances  under  our 
system.  When  a  government  at  war  maintains  such  an 
alliance  with  a  professed  pacifist  sect,  it  becomes  so 
inconsistent  as  to  be  grotesque. 

The  policy  of  the  concentration  of  the  Eskimos  will 
come  again  under  our  notice.  I  am  very  conscious  that 
in  a  book  dealing  with  travel  on  the  Arctic  coast  I  am  a 
great  while  in  reaching  salt  water;  and  that,  despite  the 
glare  ice  and  the  quick,  easy  passage  which  it  gives,  I 
linger  overlong  on  the  Kobuk.  But,  after  all,  we  are  not 
mainly  concerned  with  snow  and  ice,  with  rocks  and 
sandspits,  but  with  people,  and  we  have  been  amongst 
the  Eskimos  and  confronted  with  Eskimo  problems  ever 
since  we  reached  this  interesting  river. 

Our  stay  at  Noorvik  was  no  mor©  than  two  or  three 
hours  around  noon,  and  I  saw  for  myself  only  what  a 
man  may  see  in  that  time.  We  were  kindly  received  at 
the  teacher's  residence,  where  father  and  mother,  son 
and  daughter,  all  engaged  in  teaching,  were  met,  and  a 
meal  was  hospitably  provided,  and  I  was  pleased  with  a 
general  air  of  intelligence  and  refinement  which  seemed 
proper  to  the  commodiousness  and  comfort  of  the  house. 

The  wireless  telegraph  plant,  in  touch  with  the  sta- 
tions at  Nome  and  Nulato,  was,  it  appeared,  the  volun- 
tary work  of  the  teacher's  son,  by  him  constructed  and 
operated ;  and  we  were  furnished  with  a  sheaf  of  recent 
bulletins  to  carry  with  us  to  the  north — gloomy  with 
ominous  tales  of  submarine  activity.  While  it  was 
against  the  regulations  to  send  any  private  message 
from  this  station,  the  young  gentleman  was  obliging 
enough  to  include  in  the  news  he  sent  out  a  mention  of 
our  passing  by,  that  our  friends  might  possibly  receive 
word  of  our  movements. 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       73 

Most  of  the  cabins  at  the  place  were  of  frame  construc- 
tion from  lumber  produced  at  the  sawmill;  many  were 
unfinished ;  sawdust  seemed  the  chief  road-making  mate- 
rial and  there  were  patches  of  plank  sidewalk  here  and 
there.  The  general  effect  was  of  the  outskirts  of  a  raw 
mining  town,  familiar  and  unhandsome  enough;  to  which 
the  rectangularity  of  the  streets  contributed.  Why  is  the 
picturesque  irregularity  of  the  ordinary  native  village 
regarded  as  so  pernicious  and  depraved?  Things  that 
grow  naturally,  like  a  tree  or  a  language,  are  always 
irregular;  cities  like  Paris  and  London  and  Boston  grew 
crooked  while  they  grew  naturally  and  only  when  they 
became  self-conscious  and  sophisticated  did  they  begin 
to  ''lay  themselves  out."  Up  here — and,  I  suppose, 
elsewhere,  nowadays — regular  rows  of  cabins  seem  es- 
sential to  native  ''uplift,"  and  if  they  be  of  lumber  rather 
than  of  logs,  by  so  much  the  more  are  they  uplifting. 
Naturally  material  that  requires  a  mill,  and  an  engine  to 
run  it,  must  be  superior  in  its  civilizing  and  uplifting 
tendencies  to  material  that  anyone  who  goes  into  the 
woods  with  an  axe  can  procure  for  himself.  As  a  friend 
of  log  building  where  logs  may  be  obtained,  and  as  one 
who  is  perverse  enough  deliberately  to  prefer  irregularity 
to  chequer-board  uniformity,  I  find  myself  sadly  out  of 
accord  with  many  of  the  good  people  of  the  north ;  while 
there  are  certain  uses  of  certain  words,  repeated  till 
they  seem  to  have  no  real  meaning  left,  that  almost 
annoy  me. 

Here  we  left  Oola  to  pursue  whatever  he  was  pursuing 
with  what  success  he  might  achieve;  a  clean,  willing, 
courteous  young  man,  whom  I  remembered  in  his  tenth 
year  as  one  of  the  sturdiest,  handsomest  children  I  had 
seen  in  the  country ;  now  in  his  twenty-first  year  he  was 
personable  and  pleasant,  but  he  had  scarcely  fulfilled  the 
high  promise  of  his  boyhood.  I  gave  him  my  tent  and 
stove,  deeming  them  henceforth  superfluous  baggage,  and 
saw  to  it  that  his  sled  was  well  provisioned  for  his  return. 
Having  procured  a  young  man  and  team,  and  set  our 


74  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

watches  back  an  hour  to  make  up  for  the  fifteen  de- 
grees of  longitude  we  had  travelled  to  the  west  since 
we  left  Fort  Yukon,  we  started  late  in  the  afternoon 
for  the  one  stopping  place  between  Noorvik  and  Kot- 
zebue,  a  cabin  belonging  to  a  native  who  enjoyed 
the  sobriquet  of  ''Whiskey  Jack,"  in  the  delta  of  the 
Kobuk. 

This  delta  of  the  Kobuk  is  a  maze  of  waterways,  no 
less  than  thirteen  mouths  of  the  river  being  counted, 
connected  and  reticulated  by  vast  numbers  of  interme- 
diary channels.  The  trail  left  the  river  again  and  again 
to  cut  off  a  bend,  and  we  should  never  have  found  our 
way  in  the  gloom,  and,  presently,  in  the  darkness,  had 
not  someone  with  familiar  local  knowledge  guided  us. 
Whiskey  Jack's  cabin  is  in  the  midst  of  the  delta,  be- 
yond the  tree  line,  out  on  the  tundra.  We  found  it 
carefully  padlocked,  and  our  guide  had  forgotten  that  he 
had  been  bidden  to  bring  the  key.  When  with  some 
trouble  an  entrance  was  effected  we  looked  in  vain  for  the 
possessions  the  padlock  guarded,  for  the  place  was  bare.. 
The  old  broken  rusty  stove  of  a  coal  oil  can  that  stood 
in  a  corner  made  me  already  regret  that  I  had  parted 
with  my  own,  and  the  sodden  driftwood  which  was  our 
only  fuel  gave  equally  futile  regret  that  the  pair  of 
primus  stoves  with  which  we  were  provided  had  not 
been  charged.  Altogether  it  was  a  thoroughly  uncom- 
fortable camp.  I  rose  at  four  next  morning  and  started 
a  fire,  and  was  very  glad  to  crawl  into  bed  again  and 
snuggle  up  against  Walter  while  the  stove  slowly  heated 
the  cabin,  for  it  was  as  cold  indoors  as  out  and  the 
thermometer  on  the  sled  stood  at  — 30.  It  was  six  ere  the 
wretched  incompetent  little  stove  had  cooked  breakfast 
and  7.15  ere  we  were  hitched  up  and  gone,  the  boy  return- 
ing to  Noorvik.  He  was  of  the  "smart- Alec"  or  ''wised- 
up"  type  of  native  youth,  with  no  training  of  manners 
at  all  and  much  voluble  criticism  of  Noorvik,  tinctured 
with  profanity,  until  I  sharply  pulled  him  up.  It  was 
impossible  not  to  compare  him  mentally  with  the  polite 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       75 

and  gracious  youth  from  whom  we  had  just  parted  com- 
pany, and  once  more  I  was  proud  of  the  gentlewomen  we 
have  had  at  the  Allakaket. 

The  reader  who  is  at  all  interested  in  this  narrative, 
and  is  not  familiar  with  the  region,  is  urged  to  refer  to 
the  map  for  this  day's  journey.     The  mouths  of  the 
Kobuk  open  not  directly  into  Kotzebue  Sound  but  into 
Hotham  Inlet,  a  shallow  body  of  water  formed  by  a  nar- 
row  peninsula  that   stretches    about    sixty   miles    due 
northwest  from  the  mainland,  roughly  parallel  with  its 
general  trend,  and  encloses  not  only  this  inlet,  for  which 
the  local  name  is  the  Kobuk  Lake,  but  the  extensive  Sela- 
wik  Lake  also,  into  which  empties  the  Selawik  river. 
Just  before  the  inlet  opens  at  its  northern  end  by  its  very 
narrow  mouth  into  Kotzebue  Sound,  it  receives  a  third 
considerable  river,  the  Noatak,  the  *' Inland  River"  of 
the  early  navigators,  by  which  and  the  Colville  from  time 
immemorial  native  traffic  has  been  had  with  the  people 
of  the  northern  coast.    Receiving  so  much  river  water, 
Hotham  Inlet  is  naturally  nearly  fresh,  and  is  much 
silted  up.    I  think  that  anyone  studying  the  map  will  be 
surprised  to  find  that  this  extensive  peninsula  has  no 
name,  although  a  small  peninsula  projecting  from  it 
bears  the  name  of  Choris,  and  I  often  wondered  why  Otto 
von  Kotzebue,  who  discovered  Kotzebue  Sound  in  1816 
and  named  so  many  of  its  physical  features,  set  no  name 
upon  this  peninsula,  until  I  read  his  own  narrative  and 
learned  that  he  knew  nothing  of  the  inlet  and  supposed 
the  peninsula  to  be  the  mainland.    It  was  Beechey  in  the 
Blossom,   ten   years    later,    who    detected   and   named 
the  inlet  and  delineated  the  peninsula,  and  he  did  not 
discover  the  rivers  that  the  inlet  receives  because  neither 
the  ship  nor  her  barge  found  water  enough  to  enter  it, 
though  he  heard  of  them  and  spoke  confidently  of  their 
existence.    Unless  a  river  discharged  into  easily  navi- 
gable water  it  was  likely  to  be  missed  in  those  days,  as 
Cook,  and  later  Vancouver,  missed  the  Columbia,  the 
Fraser  and  the  Yukon.    But  it  is  perhaps  just  as  well 


76  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

that  ''the  first  who  ever  burst"  into  seas  and  sounds,  left 
something  undiscovered  for  their  successors. 

Beechey's  voyage  always  had  great  interest  for  me 
because  it  was  part,  and  an  entirely  successful  part,  of 
what  came  near  being  the  most  successful  project  of 
Arctic  exploration  ever  thought  out  and  set  on  foot. 
Franklin  was  to  advance  from  the  Mackenzie  river  in 
boats  to  the  most  western  part  of  the  north  coast,  and 
Beechey,  having  come  around  the  Horn,  was  to  go  up 
or  send  up  to  the  most  northern  point  on  the  west  coast 
to  meet  him.    Franklin  fell  short  by  about  150  miles  of 
his  goal,  and  that  was  all  that  prevented  the  complete 
determination  of  the  northern  limits  of  the  continent  in 
1826.    Moreover,  Beechey's  narrative  is  a  model  of  what 
such  writings   should   be,  carefully   accurate,   full  yet 
concise,  vivacious  yet  restrained,  with  nothing  highly- 
wrought  and  exclamatory,  none  of  that  weary  striving 
after  word-painting  which  began  to  come  in,  I  think, 
with  Osborne's  account  of  McClure's  voyage  a  quarter  of 
a  century  later,  when  the  daily  newspapers  were  inter- 
ested owing  to  the  excitement  of  the  Franklin  search. 
Beechey's  chapter  on  the  Eskimos  is  annotated  in  manu- 
script in  my  copy  by  the  man  who,  whatever  one  may 
think  of  some  of  his  views,  undoubtedly  knows  more  about 
the  western  Eskimos  at  first  hand  than  any  other  living 
man — V.  Stefansson — and  it  is  surprising  how  little  he 
finds  to  correct.    Again  and  again  the  voyages  of  the 
earlier  navigators — and  Vancouver  is  a  conspicuous  ex- 
ample— show  how  little  technical  literary  training  has 
to  do  with  the  production  of  good  literature;  the  style 
is  the  man. 

No  guide  was  necessary,  we  had  been  assured,  from 
Whiskey  Jack's  cabin  to  Kotzebue,  since  the  trail  all 
along  the  inlet  had  been  staked  on  the  ice  by  the  mail 
carrier  and  there  was  no  danger  of  losing  the  way.  But 
in  the  darkness  of  the  early  morning,  soon  after  we 
started,  and  before  we  were  extricated  from  the  delta,  we 
took  by  mistake  an  Eskimo  trapping  trail  instead  of  the 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       77 

trail  to  Kotzebue,  and  were  led  for  miles  right  back  into 
that  very  maze  of  waterways  from  which  we  were  seek- 
ing to  escape.  At  last  when  we  had  for  some  time  been 
conscious  that  we  were  wrong  and  yet  had  no  taste  for 
returning  upon  our  tracks,  the  summit  of  a  little  hillock 
gave  us  the  broad  expanse  of  the  inlet  only  a  few  hundred 
yards  away,  and  we  drove  across  the  rough  tundra 
straight  for  the  ice,  clearing  the  stunted  brush  with  the 
axe.  Following  the  edge  of  the  tundra  we  came  presently 
upon  the  mail-carrier's  stakes,  and  there  lay  before  us 
only  a  steady  grind  on  the  ice  with  a  cold  wind  in  our 
faces  all  day  long  to  "Pipe  Spit"  at  the  narrow  mouth 
of  the  inlet,  and  then  nine  miles  around  the  point  to  the 
village  of  Kotzebue,  mostly  on  ice  covered  with  wind- 
blown sand  that  made  gritty  going  for  the  steel-shod 
sled. 

Hotham  Inlet  was  named  by  Beechey  for  Admiral  Sir 
Henry  Hotham,  who  was  concerned  with  the  interception 
of  Napoleon  after  the  battle  of  Waterloo ;  of  a  family  of 
distinguished  sailors  who  have  served  their  country  for 
generations  and  are  still  serving. 

Our  way  across  the  inlet  gave  interesting  yet  irritating 
illustration  of  the  difficulty  of  keeping  dogs  to  a  course. 
Insensibly  the  leader  (to  whom  stakes  had  no  signifi- 
cance) edged  away  continually  from  the  wind.  The 
travelling  was  good  as  far  as  surface  was  concerned  and 
the  dogs  needed  no  urging,  but  the  command  "Haw!" 
proceeded  incessantly  from  Walter's  lips  all  those  long 
hours.  It  was  inmiediately  obeyed  and  the  course  imme- 
diately rectified,  only  to  be  gradually  departed  from 
again.  "Fox"  was  not  one  of  those  wonderful  leaders 
endowed  with  almost  superhuman  intelligence  of  which 
the  traveller  may  hear  tales  wherever  he  goes  in  the 
north ;  he  had  a  will  of  his  own  that,  however  often  and 
however  unceremoniously  it  might  be  subdued,  reasserted 
itself  all  the  winter  long,  and  he  was  limited  with  every 
canine  limitation;  an  ungenial  brute  who  growls  not 
only  whenever  his  harness  is  put  on  but  also  whenever  it 


78  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

is  taken  off,  though  his  growling  means  nothing.  Again 
and  again  eager  Eskimo  hands,  unhitching  the  team  for 
us,  would  leave  Fox  in  his  harness,  and  several  times 
we  were  asked  "What  the  matter!  That  dog  want 
fight?"  Yet  he  is  really  quite  harmless  and  has  it  to  his 
credit  that  he  led  our  teams  all  round  the  Arctic  coast 
and  stood  the  winter  as  well  as  the  best.  He  is  one  of 
the  few  dogs  that  I  have  never  been  able  to  make  a  pet 
of  and  my  sense  of  obligation  to  him  makes  me  sorry 
that  our  relations  are  not  more  affectionate.  There  may 
be  something  in  his  early  history  to  account  for  his  mo- 
roseness,  or  he  may  simply  be  ''built  that  way"  as  some 
dogs  and  some  people  seem  to  be. 

It  fell  entirely  dark  soon  after  we  left  Pipe  Spit,  where 
an  Eskimo  family  resided,  fishing  very  successfully 
through  the  ice,  and  we  were  already  in  difficulty  about 
the  way  when  the  kindly  native,  on  his  customary  week- 
end visit  to  Kotzebue,  overtook  us  with  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren in  his  sled  and  naught  else,  and  hitching  a  rope  to 
our  tow-line  gave  our  jaded  dogs  such  assistance  that  we 
went  flying  over  the  last  few  miles;  a  great  red  planet 
twinkling  on  the  horizon  directly  ahead  so  that  we 
thought  it  was  a  light  burning  in  the  distant  village 
until  it  sank  out  of  sight  just  before  the  actual  lights  of 
the  place  appeared. 

So  we  came  to  the  Arctic  Ocean  on  the  15th  December, 
thirty-eight  days  out  of  Fort  Yukon,  of  which  twenty- 
seven  had  been  actually  spent  in  travel;  having  come 
nearly  800  miles  at  an  average  of  close  to  thirty  miles 
a  travelling  day.  Counting  delays  and  days  of  rest  and 
all,  I  had  figured  beforehand  that  twenty  miles  a  day 
was  all  we  could  reasonably  expect  to  make,  and  it 
worked  out  at  just  about  that.  Even  so,  I  had  ''gambled 
on  the  season"  as  it  would  be  expressed  here,  taking 
chances  that  the  early  snow  would  be  light  and  the  river 
travel  correspondingly  good,  and  it  was  so. 

Since  I  had  once  before  described  a  journey  from  Fort 
Yukon  to  Kotzebue  Sound,  I  was  at  first  minded  to  start 


FROM  FORT  YUKON  TO  KOTZEBUE  SOUND       79 

the  present  narrative  at  salt  water,  and  what  has  been 
written  must  be  regarded  as  preliminary  to  the  main 
design  of  the  book.  If  I  must  confess  with  Wordsworth 
in ''Peter  Bell": 

**IVe  played  and  danced  with  my  narration, 
I  lingered  long  'ere  I  began, ' ' 

I  would  also  make  his  plea  that  my  readers  should 

"Pour  out  indulgence  still  in  measure 
As  liberal  as  ye  can." 


n 

KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE 


n 

KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE 

Sunday  was  a  glad  day  of  rest  after  a  week's  uninter- 
rupted travel  in  which  we  had  made  close  to  250  miles, 
and  the  village  of  Kotzebue  was  all  too  full  of  interest 
for  so  brief  a  stay.  A  visit  on  Saturday  night  to  the 
postmaster,  who  is  also  the  missionary,  brought  me  word 
from  Point  Barrow  and  Point  Hope  that  at  both  places 
we  were  expected,  and  brought  me  also  to  an  interesting 
gathering  in  which  I  was  very  glad  to  see  that  translation 
of  devotional  exercises  into  the  Eskimo  language  was  in 
progress.  Whenever  an  earnest  man  labours  amongst 
these  people,  whether  it  be  a  Jesuit  priest  at  St.  Michael, 
a  ** Friend"  at  Kotzebue  Sound,  a  Presbyterian  at  Point 
Barrow  or  a  Church-of-England  missionary  at  Herschel 
Island,  he  finds  himself  presently  not  content  with  the 
parrot-like  singing  or  saying  of  devotions  in  a  strange 
language,  Latin  or  English,  and  goes  to  work  as  best  he 
may  to  turn  them  into  the  mother  tongue.  My  observa- 
tion the  next  morning  at  the  public  service  confirmed  me 
in  the  impression  that  any  translation  into  the  native 
tongue,  however  faulty  it  may  be,  is  preferable  to  Eng- 
lish hymns  got  by  rote  and  sung,  it  was  impossible  to 
believe  otherwise,  with  little  or  no  sense  of  the  meaning 
of  most  of  the  words.  Two  or  three,  here  and  there, 
of  the  better  taught  amongst  the  large  congregation  had 
doubtless  more  understanding,  but  for  the  majority  I  am 
sure  that  my  old  schoolboy  rounds,  "Glorious  Apollo," 
or  ''Pray,  Sir,  be  so  good,"  would  have  been  as  effective 
mediums  of  praise  and  edification — besides  being  better 
English  and  better  music;  for  the  hymns  most  used  by 
these  congregations  are  distinctly  of  the  baser  sort. 
Every  lover  of  English  hymnody  must  deplore  the  vogue 

88 


84  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

of  the  modem  trash  and  its  penetration  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  but  the  trash,  I  have  reason  to  think,  loses  much 
of  its  trashiness  while  undergoing  the  vicissitudes  of 
translation ;  indeed  in  most  cases  nothing  more  than  the 
metre  and  the  main  thought  can  be  retained. 

We  were  lodged  by  the  trader  of  the  place  with  whom 
we  outfitted  for  our  journey  to  Point  Hope.  There  is  no 
roadhouse  at  Kotzebue  (its  native  name  ''Kikitaruk" 
seems  to  have  disappeared  since  I  was  here  last)  and  the 
two  or  three  stores  are  in  the  habit  of  putting  up  their 
infrequent  out-of-town  customers.  Walter  and  I  slept 
upon  the  floor,  managing  to  find  some  reindeer  hides  and 
gunny  sacks  to  put  underneath  us,  and  we  ate  with  the 
trader.  There  was  much  to  do  and  not  much  time  to  do 
it  in.  The  first  thing  was  to  secure  a  guide.  It  sounds 
perfectly  simple  to  follow  the  coast  all  the  way,  and  it 
would  seem  that  'Hhe  wayfaring  man,  though  a  fool, 
could  not  err  therein,"  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  way- 
faring man  would  be  a  fool  indeed  if  he  attempted  it  in 
the  dead  of  winter  without  some  knowledge  of  the  coun- 
try, or  the  company  of  one  who  had  it.  There  is  no  trail; 
we  were  come  to  the  land  of  ice  and  wind-hardened  snow, 
and  the  nights'  stopping  places  sometimes  not  easy  to  find 
unless  one  knew  just  up  what  creek  mouth  they  lay. 
Moreover,  the  weather  is  the  all-important  thing  as  re- 
gards coast  travel,  and  only  the  coast  residents  know  the 
coast  weather.  I  daresay  we  might  have  muddled  through 
by  ourselves,  but  we  were  anxious  to  reach  Point  Hope 
and  we  were  taking  no  unnecessary  chances.  Some  said  it 
was  160  and  some  said  170  miles  away,  but  all  were  agreed 
that  upon  the  fortune  of  the  weather  we  encountered  at 
Cape  Thomson  would  depend  the  success  or  failure  of 
our  attempt  to  get  there  before  Christmas.  So  we  en- 
gaged ''Little  Pete"  and  his  team  to  lead  the  way — an 
Eskimo  whose  chief  characteristic  seemed  his  perpetual 
good  humour.  Then  we  bought  furs :  a  heavy  parkee  or 
artigi  of  what  I  think  is  a  species  of  marmot,  called 
ik-sik-puk  by  the  natives  and  much  esteemed  by  them, 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  85 

for  myself,  two  pairs  of  heavy  fur  mitts  with  gauntlets 
and  two  pairs  of  heavy  fur  boots.  Walter,  wedded  to  his 
beaded  caribou  coat,  which  never  failed  to  arouse  admira- 
tion and  was  indeed  a  handsome  garment,  setting  off 
his  broad  shoulders  with  its  epaulette-like  adornments, 
would  have  no  parkee  bought  for  him  and  demurred  a 
little  at  first  at  the  boots.  But  we  were  come  to  the 
country  and  the  travel  in  which  furs  are  indispensable. 
The  provisioning  I  had  always  left  to  Walter  of  late 
journeys ;  he  knew  my  tastes  as  well  as  his  own  and  had 
carte  blanche  to  provide  for  both,  though  indeed  little 
besides  staple  food  supplies  was  procurable. 

When  we  awoke  at  five  on  Monday  morning  a  high  wind 
was  blowing  from  the  northeast  and  our  host  thought 
there  was  little  chance  of  our  leaving  for  two  or  three 
days.  But  presently  the  wind  veered,  and  at  eight  Little 
Pete  arrived  and  said  it  was  turning  into  a  fair  quarter 
for  travelling  and  that  he  was  ready  to  start ;  but  it  was 
9.30  before  the  elaborate  business  of  getting  our  stuff 
together  from  the  warehouse  and  the  store  and  loading 
and  hitching  was  done,  and  we  were  started  upon  our 
long  journey  around  the  Arctic  coast  of  Alaska. 

Our  course  lay  straight  across  the  salt-water  ice  of 
the  bay  for  Cape  Krusenstern  (Kil-li-a-mik),  named  by 
Kotzebue  after  the  first  Russian  circmnnavigator  (him- 
self being  the  second),  whose  voyage  of  1803-04  was,  in  its 
day,  of  considerable  note.  Behind  us  stretched  the  long 
line  of  the  peninsula  coast  from  Pipe  Spit  to  Cape  Blos- 
som; ahead  the  cape  loomed  dimly.  I  took  out  my 
camera,  opened  its  lens  wide,  and  attempted  a  snapshot 
of  the  village  and  its  setting,  but  although  I  made  the 
exposure  I  realized  then,  as  I  did  on  many  subsequent 
occasions,  that  there  was  not  much  likelihood  of  a  picture 
resulting;  there  was  nothing  clean-cut  and  sparkling 
about  the  scene,  it  was  grey  and  hazy  and  ill-defined. 

I  wish  I  could  convey  to  the  reader  some  suggestion 
of  the  elation  of  spirit  with  which  I  found  myself  actually 
started  upon  this  Arctic  adventure.    So  far  the  route  we 


86  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

had  traversed  was  more  or  less  familiar.  Twelve  years 
before,  I  had  reached  Kotezebue  Sound  in  an  attempt  to 
visit  Point  Hope,  but  the  delays  of  weather  and  accident 
which  had  attended  the  journey  made  my  arrival  at 
salt  water  so  late  that  it  became  necessary  to  turn  south 
instead  of  north  and  get  back  as  fast  as  possible  to  the 
interior  by  way  of  Nome  and  the  Yukon.  Ever  since 
that  time  the  desire  of  completing  the  journey  had  lin- 
gered, and  now  there  was  fair  prospect  not  only  of  Point 
Hope  but  of  the  more  ambitious  and  most  interesting 
circuit  of  the  entire  coast. 

There  is  always  something  fascinating  about  the  un- 
known ;  surely  only  a  dog  approaches  new  country  with- 
out new  emotion.  And  it  was  new  country  which  had 
been  of  special  interest  to  me  all  my  life.  My  father 
had  a  cousin  in  the  merchant  marine,  dead  before  my 
recollection,  who  had  sailed  into  both  the  arctic  and  tropic 
waters,  until,  sailing  out  of  Sydney  in  New  South  Wales, 
he  and  his  ship  were  never  seen  or  heard  of  again. 
There  remained  at  home  a  cross-grained  green  parrot 
as  a  memento  of  his  southern  voyages,  and  a  collec- 
tion of  books  of  Arctic  exploration  as  memento  of  the 
northern.  Those  fine  old  quartos,  with  their  delicate  and 
spirited  engravings  of  ships  beset  by  fantastic  icebergs, 
their  coloured  plates  of  auroras  and  parhelia,  of  Eskimos 
and  their  igloos  and  dog-teams,  are  amongst  the  most 
vivid  recollections  of  my  childhood.  The  first  and  second 
of  Sir  John  Ross,  the  first  and  second  of  Sir  Edward 
Parry,  the  first  and  second  of  Sir  John  Franklin,  a  num- 
ber of  the  Franklin  Search  books  (in  which  enterprise  I 
think  their  owner  had  seen  his  Arctic  service  in  some 
capacity  or  other).  Sir  John  Richardson's  books — these 
were  my  companions  and  delights  as  a  boy;  and  an  illus- 
trated volume  that  I  know  not  the  name  of  but  that  I 
should  rejoice  to  discover  again,  describing  the  work  of 
the  Moravian  missionaries  in  Greenland  with  much  inter- 
esting detail,  was,  in  particular,  a  sort  of  oasis  in  a  desert 
of  forgotten  religious  books  to  which,  in  the  main,  it  was 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  87 

sought  to  confine  my  reading  mth  notable  unsuccess. 
Adding  Sir  Robert  McClure,  Sir  Leopold  McClintock,  and 
remembering  that  George  III  had  intended  to  knight 
James  Cook  had  he  returned  from  his  third  voyage,  but 
by  all  that  is  modest  and  capable  and  kindly  in  the  others 
leaving  out  Sir  Edward  Belcher,  I  think  these  Arctic 
knights  constitute  as  fine  a  body  of  real  chivalry  as  Chris- 
tendom has  ever  known,  and  their  humility  of  mind,  even 
their  frank  ignorance,  their  deep  reverence  and  religious 
feeling,  seem  to  bring  them  as  much  closer  to  us  as  the 
cold  self-sufficiency  and  egotism  of  some  of  our  modem 
agnostic  explorers  seem  to  detach  them.  It  may  be  wisest 
and  best  to  abolish  all  titles  and  distinctions  of  rank  and 
every  outward  sign  that  can  set  one  man  above  another; 
I  do  not  know.  There  are  some  matters  like  the  best 
ultimate  basis  of  human  society,  and  the  question  of  the 
gold  standard  of  money,  that  simply  bewilder  me.  When 
I  am  told  that  the  chief  cause  of  the  present  ruinous 
high  prices  is  the  over-production  of  gold,  and  in  the 
same  breath  it  is  proposed  to  put  a  premium  upon  the 
further  production  of  gold,  I  am  simply  bewildered ;  and 
it  is  much  the  same  when  I  see  that  the  abolition  of  titular 
distinctions  for  achievement  only  emphasizes  the  dis- 
tinction of  wealth,  which  is  the  least  honourable  of  all. 
At  any  rate,  if  knighthood  will  soon  be  obsolete,  I  am  a 
glad  that  these  Arctic  champions,  in  their  day,  earned 
a  place  beside  Sir  William  Wallace  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
and  that  their  names  will  go  down  with  the  same  hono- 
rific prefix.  Not  even  the  Bolsheviki  can  abolish  the  past. 
With  not  more,  I  think,  than  two  or  three  exceptions, 
the  names  of  the  natural  features  along  this  entire  west 
coast  from  Kotzebue  Sound  to  Point  Barrow  were  given 
by  Beechey  upon  the  service  referred  to  in  the  years 
1826-27.  What  parts  the  Blossom  did  not  reach,  her 
*' barge"  did,  and  together  they  made  as  thorough  an 
examination  as  Vancouver  made  of  the  much  more  ex- 
tensive coast  from  Puget  Sound  to  the  Lynn  Canal,  forty 
years  before.    His  lieutenants  and  other  officers,  Belcher, 


88  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Peard,  Wainwriglit,  Elson,  Collie,  Smyth  and  Marsh,  are 
all  commemorated,  and  I  know  of  no  names  that  can 
more  justly  be  placed  on  unnamed  coasts  than  those  of 
the  men  who  first  examined  them  and  laid  them  down. 
But  the  native  names,  when  there  are  such,  and  they 
can  be  discovered  and  pronounced,  should  have  pre- 
cedence even  of  these. 

Belcher,  to  whom  I  referred  disparagingly,  opened  his 
naval  career  by  losing  the  Blossom's  barge,  and  the  lives 
of  two  men  and  a  boy,  off  the  Choris  peninsula  in  these 
waters ;  fortunately  in  the  second  year  of  the  expedition 
when  the  work  of  the  barge  was  done;  and  closed  it 
twenty-eight  years  later,  in  the  seas  north  of  the  conti- 
nent, by  abandoning  a  squadron  of  four  well-found  ves- 
sels of  the  British  nsivy,  one  of  which  floated  out  into 
Baffin's  Bay  and  was  recovered  unharmed  by  American 
whalers.  Sometimes  names  describe  their  possessors 
with  an  appropriateness  the  more  striking  because  acci- 
dental. So  the  apoplectic  irascibility,  the  overbearance, 
the  strut,  of  that  most  impertinently-named  book.  The 
Last  of  the  Arctic  Voyages,  especially  when  one  reads 
between  the  lines  with  other  knowledge  of  the  persons 
and  events,  seem  not  inappropriate  to  its  author's  patro- 
nymic. At  the  close  of  the  court-martial  he  demanded, 
his  sword  was  returned  to  him — in  silence.  Yet  I  find 
that  he  has  half  a  column  in  the  latest  Britannica,  while 
Collinson  is  entirely  omitted ;  a  circumstance  that  weighs 
more  with  me  than  all  W.  H.  Wright's  shrill,  far-fetched 
criticism  in  that  ill-tempered  book  Misinforming  a  Na- 
tion. But  I  daresay  Wright  knows  no  more  of  my  Arctic 
knights  than  I  do  of  his  minor  Russian  or  German  nov- 
elists. It  needs  omniscience  adequately  to  construct,  or 
criticize,  an  encyclopedia  of  all  the  arts  and  sciences  and 
literatures. 

The  salt  efflorescence  that  overspreads  the  ice  from 
water  oozing  up  through  the  tide  cracks,  made  our 
vehicles  drag,  especially  the  toboggan,  which  grew  in- 
creasingly unsuitable  to  our  travel.    The  toboggan  is  a 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  89 

soft-snow  and  rough-country  vehicle,  and  its  usefulness 
was  past,  but  we  had  decided  not  to  attempt  a  substitu- 
tion until  we  had  leisure  at  Point  Hope.  Already  the 
main  difference  between  winter  travel  in  the  interior  and 
on  the  coast  began  to  appear.  Much  of  the  way  down  the 
Kobuk  and  all  the  way  across  Hotham  Inlet  we  had 
indeed  been  able  to  ride,  owing  to  the  light  snow  of  the 
exceptional  season,  but  henceforth  until  we  reached  the 
interior  again  riding  would  be  the  normal  thing  with  us. 
This,  together  with  the  incomparably  fiercer  winds  of 
the  coast,  involves  the  difference  in  the  customary  dress 
between  the  two  regions.  When  I  began  my  journeys  in 
the  interior  of  Alaska  I  carried  a  fur  parkee,  and  though 
I  found  little  use  for  it,  I  kept  it  with  me  for  several 
years.  Occasionally,  when  making  camp  in  cold  weather, 
for  instance,  it  is  a  comfortable  thing  to  have,  but  in  sled- 
travel,  after  awhile  one  rejects  all  but  the  indispensables, 
and  the  fur  parkee  was  definitely  abandoned  in  favour 
of  the  cotton  parkee.  When  one  sits  on  a  sled,  however, 
instead  of  walking  or  trotting  beside  it,  much  warmer 
clothing  is  required,  and  on  this  our  first  day  of  coast 
travel  I  was  clothed  in  the  heavy  artigi  and  the  thick  fur 
boots  all  day  though  the  temperature  was  not  low  nor 
the  wind  immoderately  high. 

The  hills  that  rose  behind  us  and  had  been  vaguely  in 
view  all  day  were  the  Mulgrave  Hills  of  Capt.  Cook, 
named  in  1778,  and  it  was  only  after  much  digging  that 
I  discovered  the  interesting  fact  that  the  Lord  Mulgrave 
for  whom  they  were  undoubtedly  named  (though  I  cannot 
find  that  Cook  says  so)  was  none  other  than  the  Capt. 
Constantino  Phipps  who  made  a  noted  voyage  towards 
the  north  pole  in  1772  and  reached  a  latitude  of  80°  48' 
off  the  coast  of  Spitzbergen — the  * 'farthest  north" 
record  for  thirty  years  or  so — on  which  voyage  Horatio 
Nelson  went  as  midshipman  and  had  the  adventure  with 
a  polar  bear  that  Southey  tells  of. 

All  next  day  our  course  lay  over  the  bare  ice  of  the 
lagoons  that  skirt  the  coast  line,  a  dull  grey  expanse 


90  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

stretching  widely  and  mistily  on  the  left  hand,  the  bare 
rocks  and  hills  rising  on  the  right.  Against  a  wind 
charged  sometimes  with  flurries  of  driving  snow  we 
struggled  for  seven  hours,  and  then  found  our  night 
refuge  in  a  little  native  cabin  at  a  place  called  Kil-ick- 
mack.  All  night  the  wind  blew  and  I  was  sorry  for 
the  poor  dogs  exposed  to  its  blast,  for  it  was  keen. 
They  were  beginning  their  experience  of  the  complete 
exposure  to  the  weather  which  is  the  unavoidable  fortune 
of  Eskimo  dogs ;  there  was  nothing  to  make  a  windbreak 
of;  there  was  nothing  but  the  hardened  snow  to  lie  upon. 
Sleeping  out  at  all  temperatures,  almost  all  Alaskan 
dogs  are  used  to,  but  the  trees  of  the  interior  that  give 
some  shelter  and  afford  a  few  handfuls  of  brush  for  a 
bed,  were  gone,  and  with  them  even  these  slight  miti- 
gations. 

The  hut  at  Kil-ick-mack  was  our  first  experience  of 
what  was  to  be  a  chief  discomfort  on  this  west  coast,  the 
overcrowding  of  our  night  quarters.  The  scarcity  of 
driftwood  for  building  material  and  fuel  compels  the 
construction  of  as  small  a  dwelling  as  will  serve  the 
needs  of  the  family;  when  into  its  narrow  limits  three 
strangers  with  their  bedding,  their  grub  box  and  cooking 
vessels  and  other  baggage  are  introduced,  there  is  no 
room  for  turning  around;  cooking  and  eating  must  be 
done  in  relays,  and  the  arrangements  for  sleeping  tax  the 
ingenuity  of  the  entire  company.  Although  we  arose  at 
six,  the  operations  of  breakfast  were  so  impeded  by  this 
cause  that  it  was  half-past  eight  before  we  started, 
and  the  longest  day  of  our  coast  travel,  so  far,  lay 
before  us. 

The  wind  had  lulled  and  a  little  snow  fell  at  intervals, 
and  the  day  was  so  dull  that  there  was  no  clear  vision 
even  at  noon.  Most  of  our  way  lay  just  on  the  shore  side 
of  ice,  heaped  in  jagged  masses  about  the  tide  crack; 
indeed  most  of  the  smooth  travelling  all  along  this  coast 
is  found  in  the  narrow  stretch  between  this  wall  of  ice 
blocks  and  the  beach.    Sometimes  it  is  wet  from  over- 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  91 

flow  and  passage  must  be  sought  inshore  upon  the  poorly- 
covered  gravel  and  sand,  or  else  the  ice-wall  must  be 
crossed  to  smoother  expanses  beyond.  The  same  low- 
lying  coast  fringed  with  lakes  and  lagoons,  with  high 
ground  rising  to  hills  beyond,  was  visible  when  anything 
was  visible  at  all.  Capes  marked  on  the  map  did  not 
appear  as  capes  at  all,  and  this  is  true  of  many  such 
promontories  along  the  whole  coast,  for  the  charting  was 
done  from  decks  of  vessels  at  safe  sailing  distance,  the 
low  coast  foreshortening  itself  against  the  hills  until  the 
hills  seemed  at  the  water's  edge  instead  of  several  miles 
inland.  Beechey  sailed  closer  than  Cook  and  changed 
the  chart  in  places,  but  the  observation  holds  good. 

For  nine  hours  we  pursued  our  monotonous  way,  the 
wind  rising  as  the  darkness  came,  until  when  the  faint 
welcome  lights  of  the  village  of  Kivalina  appeared,  it 
had  been  blowing  with  much  force  for  some  time  and  was 
become  piercingly  cold.  The  schoolhouse  and  teacher's 
residence  combined  was  at  the  southern  point  of  the  vil- 
lage, looming  large  over  all  the  little  dwellings,  and  here 
we  were  expected  and  awaited,  but  we  did  not  know  it 
and  pushed  on  to  the  extreme  north  end  of  the  village 
where  the  trader  with  whom  we  had  proposed  to  stay 
lived,  having  much  difficulty  in  forcing  our  jaded  dogs 
past  habitation  after  habitation.  We  were  received  by 
Jim  Allen  with  the  thoroughgoing  hospitality  of  the 
Arctic,  nothing  loath  to  eat  the  meal  speedily  pre- 
pared for  us  by  his  native  wife,  and  to  seek  early 
repose. 

Kivalina  was  our  first  thoroughly  Eskimo  settlement ; 
Kotzebue  with  its  prominent  church  and  stores  and  ware- 
houses, and  its  large  use  of  lumber,  seemed  only  partly 
so,  though  I  have  no  doubt  that  those  familiar  mth  the 
untouched  Eskimos  of  Coronation  Gulf  would  consider 
Kivalina  highly  sophisticated.  It  takes  one  some  time 
to  become  accustomed  to  the  utter  nakedness  of  such  a 
village  site,  to  what  seems  its  preposterous  ineligibility. 
It  takes,  I  think,  some  acquaintance  to  realize  that  there 


92  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

are  choice  and  degree  amidst  the  nakedness  and  ineli- 
gibility of  the  whole  coast  and  that  the  site  of  every 
settlement  is   determined  by  some  natural  advantage. 

When  the  next  morning  Little  Pete  said  ''No  go,"  be- 
cause the  wind  was  foul  for  the  passage  of  Cape  Thomson 
and  it  were  better  to  await  a  change  here  than  in  the  hut 
near  the  foot  of  the  cape,  which  would  be  our  night's  stop, 
I  walked  the  length  of  the  village  to  pay  my  respects  to 
the  schoolmaster  and  ask  permission  to  attend  his  school, 
with  this  strong  feeling:  a  feeling  of  wonder  that  any 
people  should  have  built  their  homes  in  such  bleak,  for- 
bidding place.  It  is  not  easy  to  describe  emptiness  and 
nakedness,  and  I  suppose  such  terms  of  vacancy  as  the 
language  contains  will  be  hard-worked  in  the  pages  that 
follow,  for  this  is  the  deep  and  abiding  impression  which 
the  country  makes  upon  the  mind,  and  though  modified 
as  one  learns  more  and  more  of  its  resources  and  of  the 
occupations  of  its  inhabitants,  it  remains  predominant. 
The  irregular,  hillock-shaped  igloos  amidst  which  I 
walked  through  the  driving  snow  seemed  like  natural 
irregularities  and  protuberances  of  the  ground  rather 
than  constructions  of  human  art — doubtless  every 
stranger's  first  impression  of  igloos,  not  worth  recording 
for  those  read  in  Arctic  travels. 

I  was  glad  of  the  daylight  of  noon  for  a  look  at  Kiva- 
lina;  when  one  reaches  a  place  after  dark  and  leaves  it 
before  daylight  one  does  not  really  see  it  at  all.  But  I 
shall  not  detain  the  reader  at  this  village  because  we  shall 
visit  it  again.  Let  me  say  only  that  the  name  of  the 
place,  which  sounds  strangely  musical  for  an  Eskimo 
name — more  Mediterranean  than  Arctic — has  had  a  final 
*'k"  elided  by  the  white  men  and  map-makers — a  process 
which  is  in  operation  elsewhere  on  the  coast. 

"We  learned  during  the  day  that  the  ice  was  out  around 
Cape  Thomson,  driven  off  the  coast  by  late  prevailing 
winds,  and  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  pass  the  cape 
by  a  rough  inland  circumvention  used  under  these  condi- 
tions.   Little  Pete  professed  himself  unacquainted  with 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  93 

this  route,  and,  nothing  loath,  I  thought,  to  return  to 
Kotzebue  for  Christmas,  relinquished  his  commission 
and  the  half  of  his  recompense  to  a  youth  of  the  place 
named  Chester,  who  had  many  times  travelled  the  coast, 
sometimes  around,  and  sometimes  over,  the  cape. 

On  the  next  morning,  Friday  21st  December,  the  wind 
was  fair  from  the  south,  dead  behind  us,  and  we  were  off 
and  away  by  seven  o'clock.  For  fifteen  miles  our  way 
lay  over  the  smooth  ice  of  lagoons,  and  with  the  aid  of  the 
wind  we  travelled  rapidly.  Ten  miles  of  beach  travel 
followed  with  diminished  speed,  and  we  stopped  at  a 
trapping  cabin,  occupied  by  a  mulatto  married  to  an  Es- 
kimo woman,  for  lunch.  Thenceforward  the  beach  ice 
was  more  and  more  encrusted  with  pebbles  and  shale, 
and  our  progress  still  more  retarded;  the  iron  runners 
of  the  sled  are  very  refractory  in  passing  over  gravel 
and  the  toboggan  had  rather  the  better  of  it ;  but  by  three 
o'clock  we  were  at  the  cabin  we  had  intended  to  occupy, 
only  to  find  it  already  occupied  by  a  party  of  reindeer 
folk  come  in  from  their  herd,  including  a  woman  and 
child.  We  decided,  therefore,  to  push  on  to  another 
cabin,  about  eight  miles  further,  and  were  no  more  than 
unpacked  and  settled  to  the  business  of  supper  than  the 
folk  we  had  left  behind,  because  we  would  not  disturb  or 
incommode  them,  arrived  to  spend  the  night  also,  and  we 
were  miserably  and  unwholesomely  overcrowded  after  all. 
Yet  I  was  struck  by  the  magnanimous  hospitality  of  one 
of  the  men,  who  left  us  and  went  cheerfully  to  spend  the 
night  in  an  empty,  cold,  tumble-down  hovel  an  hundred 
yards  away,  when  I  learned  at  Point  Hope  that  the  cabin 
we  were  occupying  actually  belonged  to  him. 

Not  only  were  we  wretchedly  overcrowded,  but  we  were 
unhappy  that  night.  The  wind  suddenly  changed  to  the 
northeast  again,  barring  any  passage  of  the  cape,  over 
or  around,  and  we  knew  that  such  a  wind  frequently  per- 
sists for  a  week  at  a  time  and  commonly  for  three  days. 
It  looked  as  if  the  whole  company  would  be  detained  in 
this  grimy  little  hovel,  for  our  reindeer-herding  compan- 


94  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ions  were  also  bound  for  Point  Hope,  and  the  prospect  of 
such  detention,  with  the  likelihood  of  not  reaching  the 
mission  for  Christmas  after  all  which  it  involved,  cast 
our  spirits  down.  But  Walter  and  I  were  soon  deep  in 
Romeo  and  Juliet  and  the  strife  of  Montague  and  Cap- 
ulet  and  the  plight  of  the  luckless  lovers, ' '  The  consuming 
love  of  the  children  arising  from  out  of  the  very  midst  of 
the  deadly  enmity  of  the  parents, ' '  drew  our  minds  away 
from  our  own  troubles;  the  scented  gardens  of  Verona 
vocal  with  the  nightingale  slipped  into  the  place  of  the 
Arctic  waste  and  its  icy  winds. 

We  had  heard  much  about  Cape  Thomson  even  before 
we  reached  the  coast.  A  trader  at  Kyana  had  given  us  a 
graphic  description  of  the  wind  blowing  stones  from  its 
summit  a  mile  out  on  the  ice,  and  I  knew  a  man,  a  per- 
fectly sober  missionary,  whose  loaded  sled  was  blown 
over  and  over  and  himself  literally  swept  away  from  it 
by  the  force  of  the  hurricane-like  "woollies"  that  rush 
down  the  steep  gullies.  I  think  we  had  met  half  a  dozen 
people  who  had  thrilling  experiences  to  relate  about  this 
dreaded  promontory.  It  is  one  of  Beechey's  capes, 
named  for  a  Mr.  Deas  Thomson,  one  of  the  commissioners 
of  the  British  navy,  but  while  Beechey  wrote  it  thus  in 
his  narrative,  on  his  accompanying  map  it  appears  as 
"Thompson,"  and  since  an  hundred  navigators  use  his 
map  to  one  who  reads  his  narrative,  the  intrusive  "p" 
has  become  permanent.  I  was  interested  to  learn  at  Point 
Hope  that  the  revenue  cutter  Bear  still  employs 
Beechey's  chart  in  its  navigation  of  these  waters. 

I  wish  someone  would  write  a  history  of  the  British 
Hydrographical  Office,  w^hich  for  more  than  a  century 
has  been  the  chief  source  and  supply  of  information  for 
the  whole  maritime  world;  it  would  abound  in  the  ro- 
mance of  the  sea  and  be  full  of  fascinating  detail  of 
operations  in  the  remotest  comers  of  the  earth.  What 
gulf  or  bay  is  there  into  which  its  surveyors  have  not 
penetrated?  what  coast  line  they  have  not  laid  down? 
what  straits  and  channels  they  have  not  sounded? 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  95 

"Never  was  isle  so  little, 
Never  was  sea  so  lone, 
But  over  the  sand  and  the  palm  trees 
An  English  flag  has  flown." 

Great  Britain  has  many  claims  to  greatness,  many- 
boasts  of  beneficent  protection  and  service  to  mankind, 
but  I  know  not  if  there  be  anything  finer  in  her  history 
than  the  work  of  her  public  and  private  hydrographers. 
Spain  in  her  heyday  kept  the  secrets  of  her  discoveries 
so  closely  that  some  of  them  were  forgotten  by  herself 
until  the  British  re-discovered  them,  but  anyone  who  has 
had  a  sixpence  to  spend  could  always  obtain  a  copy  of  any 
chart  in  the  British  hydrographical  archives,  though  it 
may  have  cost  thousands  of  pounds  to  procure,  and  it 
is  not  possible  to  plan  a  course  in  any  waters  of  the  wide 
world  where  British  charts  would  not  give  guidance.  The 
coast  of  Alaska  was  wholly  delineated  by  British  hydrog- 
raphers (though  of  course  there  had  been  some  previous 
Russian  work) — Cook  and  Vancouver  and  Beechey  and 
Franklin  and  Dease  and  Simpson — the  latest  of  them  up- 
wards of  eighty  and  the  earliest  of  them  nearly  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  Vancouver  is  said  to  have 
added  ten  thousand  miles  of  coast  line  to  the  world's 
maps,  a  title  to  greatness,  to  my  mind,  more  valid  than 
that  of  Alexander  or  Napoleon.  But  I  must  not  get  on 
the  subject  of  Vancouver. 

It  is  always  the  unexpected  that  happens.  When  we 
arose  next  morning  there  was  a  dead  calm  and  we  hurried 
away  to  take  advantage  of  it,  a  moon  at  the  end  of  her 
first  quarter  giving  us  good  light.  We  were  soon  upon 
the  rough  sea-ice,  which  had  only  the  past  day  or  two 
been  driven  back  upon  the  coast ;  plainly  it  was  possible 
to  double  the  cape,  and  we  rejoiced  that  we  were  not  com- 
pelled to  the  laborious  alternative.  I  should  not  have 
minded  climbing  the  cliff  could  I  have  hoped  for  the  view 
from  the  top  that  Beechey  had,  the  *'low  land  jetting  out 
from  the  coast  to  the  w.n.w.  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach" 


96  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

which  ''as  the  point  had  never  been  placed  on  our  charts** 
he  set  down  on  his  map  and  named  Point  Hope  for  Sir 
William  Johnston  Hope,  of  a  well-knowTi  house  long 
connected  with  the  sea.  But  at  this  time  of  the  year 
that  was  out  of  the  question  and  I  understand  that  the 
only  practicable  sled  route  over  the  cape  lies  back  so  far 
as  to  yield  no  comprehensive  view. 

Cape  Thomson  is  a  succession  of  bold,  ragged,  rocky 
bluffs,  700  or  800  feet  high,  rising  one  beyond  the  other 
for  seven  miles,  with  steep  gullies  between,  and  descend- 
ing sheer  into  deep  water  with  no  beach  at  all.  The  rock 
is  weathered  into  fantastic  shapes,  and  there  are  several 
natural  arches  at  the  water  level,  through  one  of  which 
the  teams  passed.  The  going  was  exceedingly  rough  and 
the  sleds  were  knocked  about  a  good  deal.  At  one  point 
where  the  ice  was  especially  lumpy  and  jagged  we  went 
quite  a  distance  out  to  sea  to  reach  a  tempting  level 
stretch,  and  I  thought  a  little  nervously  of  the  advice  we 
had  received  not  on  any  account  to  go  far  from  the  coast 
lest  a  wind  should  suddenly  spring  up  and  take  ice  and 
all  out,  but  Chester  knew  his  business  and  we  came  safely 
round  the  cape,  which  drops  as  abruptly  to  a  level  at  its 
northern  point  as  it  rises  from  it  at  its  southern.  Near 
the  beginning  of  this  picturesque  promontory  there  are 
several  groups  of  rocks,  the  profiles  of  which  bear  some, 
grotesque  human  resemblance.  Pointing  to  one  of  them 
Chester  laughed  and  said  "Old  Man  Thomson,"  and  that 
is  as  near  the  commissioner  of  the  navy  as  I  could  find 
that  anyone  on  the  coast  came  to  any  of  the  Arctic 
eponyms — a  word  that  I  have  wished  more  than  once  had 
an  English  equivalent ;  and  I  do  not  know  why  we  should 
not  reverse  "namesake"  into  "sake-name." 

How  exceedingly  fortunate  we  had  been  in  the  weather, 
and  how  very  local  the  weather  is  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  cape,  we  realized  an  hour  later  when,  on  looking  back, 
we  could  see  the  wind  driving  a  cloud  of  snow  right  over 
the  cape  far  out  to  sea,  although  it  was  calm  where  we 
were.    It  is  such  winds,  coming  with  hurricane  force  from 


} 


M 


S'" 


^^:-< 


y? 


KOTZEBUE  SOUND  TO  POINT  HOPE  97 

the  interior  plateau  and  dropping  suddenly  down  the 
steep  gullies,  that  cause  the  ''woollies"  so  much  dreaded 
both  in  winter  and  summer.  Only  the  previous  summer 
a  whale  boat  with  a  white  man  and  several  natives  had 
been  lost  in  this  neighbourhood.  I  have  read  that  the 
rugged  eastern  shore  of  the  Adriatic  Sea  is  subject  to 
just  such  sudden  violent  winds. 

There  followed  a  succession  of  the  long  lagoons  that 
had  already  become  familiar  to  us  and  that  were  to 
become  much  more  so;  they  are  the  chief  characteristic 
of  the  whole  Arctic  coast  of  Alaska.  We  passed  over 
them  quickly  and  coldly,  for  an  air  began  to  move  against 
us,  and  were  presently  at  the  deserted  whaling  station 
of  Jabbertown,  with  its  deserted  schoolhouse,  five  miles 
from  Point  Hope.  Just  as  it  grew  really  dark  a  tiny 
light  sprang  up  dead  ahead,  and  we  kept  a  straight  course 
for  it  over  the  bare  level  tundra  until  we  came  to  the 
mission  house  and  the  glad  welcome  that  awaited  us,  Sat- 
urday the  22nd  December.  Our  first  objective  point  was 
reached,  the  first  grand  stage  of  our  journey  was  accom- 
plished, within  the  allotted  time. 


ni 

POINT  HOPE 


m 

POINT  HOPE 

Feom  the  point  of  view  of  cold-blooded,  scientific 
philanthropy,  though  of  course  not  from  any  Christian 
point  of  view,  it  is  possible  to  contend  that  the  little, 
remote,  heathen  peoples  of  the  world  were  better  left  en- 
tirely to  themselves,  if  such  continual  isolation  were  any 
way  practicable.  But  it  is  not,  and  those  who  plead  for 
it  know  perfectly  well  that  it  is  not.  The  trader,  the 
beach-comber  and  the  squaw-man  have  always  been  hard 
upon  the  heels  of  the  explorer.  No  sooner  had  Vitus 
Bering  discovered  the  Aleutian  Islands  than  the  Kam- 
chatka "promyshleniks"  began  their  devastating  in- 
tercourse with  the  natives  which  ended  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  greater  part  of  them  and  would  probably  have 
depopulated  the  islands  but  for  the  vigorous  efforts  of 
the  great  missionary  Veniammoff,  whose  impassiond 
intervention  on  behalf  of  the  Aleuts  recalls  the  memory 
of  the  heroic  Las  Casas  and  the  ceaseless  battle  which 
he  waged  against  the  oppression  of  the  Indian  three  cen- 
turies before. 

Fourteen  years  after  Cook  discovered  the  Sandwich 
Islands,  Vancouver  found  them  the  resort  of  *'a  banditti 
of  renegadoes  that  had  quitted  different  trading  vessels 
in  consequence  of  disputes  with  their  respective  com- 
manders,"* and  had  ^'forgotten  the  rules  which  hu- 
manity, justice  and  common  honesty  prescribe" — Por- 
tuguese, Genoese,  Chinese,  English  and  Americans.  The 
same  commander,  a  magnanimous  and  kindly  spirit, 
grows  so  indignant  over  ''the  very  unjustifiable  conduct 
of  the  traders"!  on  the  shores  of  the  Alexander  archi- 

*  Vancouver's  Voyages,  Vol.  5,  p.  112. 
t  Ibid.,  Vol.  6,  p.  37. 

101 


102  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

pelago  that  nowadays  the  local  newspapers  would  cer- 
tainly denounce  such  a  writer  as  '' slandering  the  white 
men  of  Alaska." 

The  remotest  and  last  discovered  people  of  the  earth, 
the  ''Blonde"  or  Copper  Eskimos,  about  whom  the 
newspapers  grew  so  sensational  a  few  years  ago,  have 
already  suffered  an  invasion  of  the  same  sort,  and  when 
I  was  at  Herschel  Island  I  saw  a  degenerate  Eussian 
Jew  serving  a  sentence  at  the  Northwest  Mounted  Police 
Post — not  because  he  had  outraged  these  simple,  sturdy 
folk,  but  because  he  had  impudently  violated  the  Cana- 
dian customs  laws  in  doings  so. 

But  one  need  not  go  out  of  these  western  waters  for 
overwhelming  testimony  to  the  havoc  wrought  by  white 
men.  When  John  Muir  made  the  cruise  of  the  Corwin 
in  1881  he  found  that  the  inhabitants  of  St.  Matthew's 
Island,  to  the  number  of  several  hundreds,  had  ''died  of 
starvation  caused  by  abundance  of  rum  which  rendered 
them  careless  about  the  laying  up  of  ordinary  supplies 
of  food  for  the  winter,"  *  and  on  St.  Lawrence  Island 
nearly  a  thousand  people  had  died,  we  know  from  other 
sources,  of  the  same  cause.  "The  scene  was  indescrib- 
ably ghastly  and  desolate.  The  shrunken  bodies  with 
rotting  furs  on  them,  or  white,  bleaching  skeletons, 
picked  bare  by  the  crows,  were  lying  mixed  with  kitchen- 
midden  rubbish  where  they  had  been  cast  out  by  surviv- 
ing relatives  while  they  had  yet  strength  to  carry 
them."t 

Shall  the  primitive  peoples  of  the  earth  know  nothing 
of  the  white  man  save  of  the  "banditti  of  renegadoes" 
which  quickly  infests  newly-discovered  shores'?  Shall 
such  reckless  and  unprincipled  wastrels  work  their  will 
unhindered?  Shall  drunkenness  and  lust  and  fraud  and 
trickery  and  violence  be  the  only  teaching  received  from 
the  white  man's  "civilization"?  I  am  content  to  rest 
the  cause  of  missions  upon  the  inevasible  answer  to  that 

*  Cruise  of  the  '  Corwin,*  p.  25. 
t  Ihid.,  p.  109. 


POINT  HOPE  103 

question, — content,  that  is,  for  the  present  writing;  for 
anyone  who  is  read  ever  so  little  in  the  history  of  ex- 
ploration knows  that  word  of  newly-found  tribes  brings 
a  flock  of  predatory  bipeds  just  as  surely  as  the  scent  of 
new  carrion  brings  a  flock  of  vultures. 

It  was  a  letter  written  in  the  year  1889  by  Lieutenant 
Commander  Stockton,  U.  S.  N.,  now  rear-admiral  on 
the  retired  list  and  President  of  George  "Washington 
University,  who  had  just  returned  from  an  Arctic 
cruise,  which  started  missionary  work  amongst  these 
western  Eskimos.  He  was  touched  by  the  degraded 
condition  in  which  he  found  them,  and  he  wrote  to 
Dr.  Sheldon  Jackson,  then  Special  Agent  for  Alaskan 
Education,  pleading  that  something  might  be  done  for 
them. 

I  cannot  put  my  hand  upon  a  History  of  Whaling  full 
of  graphic  pictures  and  interesting  details,  that  I  picked 
up  at  an  old  book  store  in  Boston — and  am  so  situated 
that  if  I  cannot  put  my  hand  upon  a  book  it  is  not  within 
three  hundred  miles  of  me  and  probably  not  within  a 
thousand.  Sydney  Smith's  complaint  about  his  York- 
shire residence  that  it  was  *' actually  twelve  miles  from 
a  lemon"  loses  its  point  up  here.  Some  passer-by,  I 
think,  must  have  been  attracted  by  that  book's  graphic 
pictures  and  interesting  details  also.  Whaling,  however, 
began  north  of  Bering's  Straits  well  before  the  middle 
of  the  last  century,  and,  I  think,  very  shortly  after  the 
publication  of  Beechey's  narrative  in  1831,  in  which  he 
mentions  the  whales  of  these  waters ;  and  just  as  the  fur 
of  the  sea-otter  was  the  object  of  desire  that  brought 
about  the  ruin  of  the  Aleutian  islanders,  so  whalebone 
was  the  curse  of  the  Arctic  Eskimos.  Collinson  in  the 
Enterprise,  returning  from  the  Franklin  search  in  1854, 
finds  whaling  in  full  swing,  and  writes  that  **rum  and 
brandy  were  the  articles  most  coveted  by  the  natives  in 
exchange  for  their  furs  and  walrus-teeth. ' ' 

The  first  cruise  of  a  revenue  cutter  above  Bering's 
Straits  was  that  of  the  Corwin  in  1880,  and  it  may  be 


104  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

gathered  that  the  early  cruises  of  revenue  cutters  did 
not  bring  much  protection  to  the  natives.  There  are 
stories  still  to  pick  up  along  the  west  coast  of  liquor  car- 
ried by  such  craft  and  of  eager  profitable  trading  by 
both  officers  and  men.  At  any  rate,  for  thirty  or  forty 
years  the  whalers  with  crews  of  the  sweepings  of  San 
Francisco  had  unchecked,  almost  unnoticed,  scope  to 
work  their  will  along  the  coast.  Point  Hope  was  one  of 
their  chief  resorts,  for  trading,  for  securing  native  hands 
to  replace  deserters  or  eke  out  their  scanty  companies, 
and  often,  beyond  question,  for  procuring  native  women 
to  serve  the  uses  of  officers  and  men ;  this  last  sometimes 
by  liquor  and  cajolery,  sometimes  by  simple  kidnap- 
ning. 

Beechey  was  the  first  white  man  to  land  at  Point  Hope 
and  to  come  in  contact  with  its  natives.  The  under- 
ground habitations  were,  however,  deserted  save  for  a 
few  old  men  and  women  and  children, — the  men  gone  on 
their  hunting  excursions;  ''some  were  blind,  others  de- 
crepit, and,  dressed  in  greasy,  worn-out  clothes,  they 
looked  perfectly  wretched."  He  describes  "the  heaps 
of  filth  and  ruined  habitations,  filled  with  stinking 
water."  I  have  never  seen  an  Eskimo  village  in  the 
summer-time,  but  I  knew  how  abominable  an  Indian  vil- 
lage can  become  when  the  melting  snow  brings  the  ordure 
and  garbage  of  winter  to  life.  If,  as  I  suspect,  though 
the  narrative  is  not  clear,  Beechey  landed  on  the  north 
side  of  the  point,  he  would  pass  through  the  abandoned 
part  of  the  village,  which  has  been  so  long  abandoned 
that  I  could  find  no  knowledge  of  the  time  when  it  was 
occupied.  It  is  now  a  quarry  for  Eskimo  antiquities  as 
well  as  a  sort  of  coal  mine,  for  I  often  saw  men  digging 
around  it  and  removing  the  upper  layers  of  soil,  satu- 
rated with  immemorial  blubber  and  seal-oil,  for  fuel.  I 
procured  a  number  of  relics  of  the  ''Ipanee  Eskimo"  as 
they  are  called — Eskimo  as  they  lived  before  their  cus- 
toms and  habits  had  been  modified  in  any  way,  but  many 
of  these  relics  were  so  decayed  as  to  crumble  and  fall  to 


POINT  HOPE  105 

pieces  before  I  got  them  home.  There  is  a  small  market 
for  such  wares  in  passing  ships,  enough  to  stimulate  ex- 
cavation. 

It  was  not  until  1890  that  the  first  missionary  estab- 
lishments were  set  up  on  this  coast,  at  Cape  Prince  of 
Wales,  at  Point  Hope  and  at  Point  Barrow  simulta- 
neously, at  the  joint  charges  of  the  Bureau  of  Educa- 
tion, and  the  Congregational,  the  Episcopal  and  the  Pres- 
byterian churches  respectively.  The  chief  praise  for 
the  work  lies  with  that  remarkable  man  Dr.  Sheldon 
Jackson,  whose  appointment  to  the  educational  super- 
intendency  of  Alaska  was  so  wise  and  fit  as  to  seem  acci- 
dental to  our  system  when  compared  with  the  first  ap- 
pointment of  other  officials  in  this  territory. 

Of  the  two  men  who  went  to  Cape  Prince  of  Wales, 
one,  H.  R.  Thornton,  was  murdered  by  drunken  natives 
two  years  later;  the  other,  William  T.  Lopp,  after  twenty 
years'  service  at  the  place,  occupies  Dr.  Sheldon  Jack- 
son's post  of  superintendent  today  with  zeal  and  success. 
To  Point  Hope  there  went  a  physician,  John  B.  Driggs, 
who  was  in  residence  for  eighteen  years. 

I  had  ample  leisure  to  acquaint  myself  with  Point 
Hope.  The  place  itself,  indeed,  called  for  no  very  long 
investigation  to  describe  it  adequately;  it  is  perhaps  as 
dreary  and  desolate  a  spot  as  may  be  found  on  earth. 
Beechey's  "low  land,  jetting  out  from  the  coast  to  the 
w.n.w.  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach"  is  a  sandspit  about 
sixteen  miles  long,  broad  at  its  base  and  tapering  to  its 
extremity,  where  it  finally  crooks  itself  downward  to  a 
narrow  point,  something  as  a  forefinger  might  be  crooked, 
whence  its  native  name  "Ti^-a-ra,"  which,  like  Kivalina, 
has  lost  a  final  *'k." 

The  level  sand  and  gravel,  in  places  covered  with 
growth  of  moss  and  grass,  but  much  of  it  quite  bare,  is 
invaded  by  lagoons  communicating  with  the  ocean,  so 
that  much  of  the  whole  area  of  the  peninsula  is  gutted 
out.  At  the  mission  there  is  a  fifty  or  sixty-foot  scaf- 
folding of  a  tower  which  carries  the  bell  and  serves  as 


106  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

a  post  of  observation.*  From  its  summit  a  good  part  of 
the  peninsula  is  visible,  but  not  the  whole,  nor  do  I  think 
there  is  any  point  nearer  than  Cape  Thomson  to  the  south 
or  Cape  Lisburne  to  the  north  which  would  give  a  full 
\iew,  and  they  too  far  off  for  any  detail.  Cape  Thomson, 
twenty-five  miles  to  the  south,  is  the  western  termination 
of  the  most  northerly  spur  of  the  Endicotts,  which  are, 
in  fact,  the  Eocky  Mountains ;  the  same  range  which  lifts 
its  white  peaks  around  Coldfoot  on  the  Koyukuk,  so  that 
we  had  now  flanked  the  western  extremity  of  those  moun- 
tains. Cape  Lisburne  is  the  western  termination  of  a 
range  that  stretches  down  obliquely  from  the  northern 
coast.  The  country  between  these  elevations  seems  to 
form  a  natural  chute  for  the  northeast  blizzards  that  pre- 
vail during  the  winter,  and  lying  thus  at  the  mouth  of 
the  chute  the  barren  sandspit  is  swept  by  gales  of  a  pro- 
longed ferocity  that  we  who  knew  only  the  forested  in- 
terior of  Alaska  had  no  experience  to  match.  From 
the  1st  to  the  8th  January,  1918,  without,  I  think,  a  mo- 
ment's cessation,  day  or  night,  a  raging  blast  prevailed 
from  that  quarter,  with  the  thermometer  at  15°  to  30° 
below  zero  F.,  and  that  was  only  one  of  many  storms 
during  our  six  or  seven  weeks  at  the  place.  At  what  rate 
the  wind  blew  I  could  not  guess.  There  had  been  several 
installations  of  an  anemometer  at  the  mission,  and  the 
interior  mechanism  yet  remained,  but  the  vane  had  been 
blown  off  every  time.  If  the  reader  will  add  to  these 
violent,  persistent  winds,  first  the  driving  snow  and  sand 
with  which  they  are  charged,  then  the  cold  that  accom- 
panies them,  and  then  the  darkness,  at  a  season  when 
the  sun  does  not  rise  above  the  horizon  at  all,  he  will  un- 
derstand that  any  continuous  travel  against  them  is  out 
of  the  question,  and  that  even  to  be  outdoors  upon  neces- 
sary occasions  while  they  rage  is  fraught  with  discom- 
fort and  difficulty,  not  to  say  danger.  Storms  we  have 
in  the  interior;  in  certain  regions,  and  especially  in  cer- 

*  I  have  just  learned  that  it  was  thrown  down  in  a  hurricane  the  fol- 
lowing winter. 


POINT  HOPE  107 

tain  reaches  of  rivers,  high  winds  that  blow  for  many- 
hours  in  one  direction,  but  nothing  that  I  have  known  in 
ten  years  of  winter  travel  comparable  to  these  awful 
Arctic  blizzards. 

Why  should  this  sandspit,  naked  to  the  blast  from 
whatever  quarter  it  blow,  be  the  home  of  human  beings 
for  generation  after  generation"?  The  answer  is  very 
simple :  chiefly  because  it  is  naked  to  every  blast,  its  situ- 
ation offers  special  advantages  for  seal  hunting.  The 
seal  is  taken  at  the  edge  of  the  shore-ice  where  the  open 
water  begins,  and  all  the  winter  through  the  winds  are 
now  driving  the  pack-ice  in  upon  the  shore-ice  and  now 
driving  it  out  again.  When  the  pack-ice  is  driven  away 
from  the  shore-ice,  then  and  then  only  is  sealing  possible. 
The  advantage  of  Point  Hope  is  that  almost  every  wind 
that  blows  renders  sealing  possible  on  one  side  of  the 
sandspit  or  the  other,  and  to  these  coast  Eskimos  the 
seal  is  the  staff  of  life.  If  the  seal  be  plentiful  they  can 
manage  for  food  and  fuel  with  nothing  else.  Moreover, 
in  summer  a  vessel  may  usually  find  safe  berth  by  shift- 
ing its  anchorage  from  one  side  to  the  other  of  the  spit, 
so  that  the  place  has  its  special  elegibility  all  the  year. 

This  is  not  the  place  nor  is  it  my  purpose  to  attempt  a 
general  correction  of  mistaken  notions  about  the  Arctic 
regions,  yet  it  may  serve  to  set  right  one  of  them.  I  have 
found  that  it  is  very  commonly  imagined  that  during  the 
winter  the  polar  waters  are  solidly  sheathed  in  stationary 
ice.  There  are  no  polar  waters  of  any  extent  so  sealed 
and  settled  for  any  length  of  time.  The  winds  of 
which  I  have  spoken  will  break  up  any  ice-sheet  however 
thick  and  solid,  and  in  general  the  polar  seas  are  in  con- 
stant movement  under  that  impulse,  so  that  the  notion 
of  a  petrified  quiescence  should  be  replaced  by  one  of 
ceaseless,  violent  disturbance. 

A  very  intelligent  gentleman  whom  I  met  at  Kotzebue, 
who  for  three  years  had  been  in  charge  of  the  govern- 
ment school  at  Cape  Prince  of  Wales,  told  me  that  during 
those   three   winters   the  ice   was   in  constant   motion 


106  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

through  Bering  Straits,  now  drifting  south  and  now 
north,  as  the  wind  changed,  and  that  only  once  in  ten  or 
twelve  years  do  the  straits  close  for  a  few  days  so  as  to 
permit  passage  on  foot.  One  such  occasion  occurred 
during  his  stay,  but  he  did  not  avail  himself  of  it.  I  am 
afraid  that  if  the  opportunity  of  walking  from  America 
to  Asia  and  back  had  come  to  me,  there  would  have  been 
an  unauthorized  holiday  in  that  Eskimo  school. 

Ten  or  twelve  degrees  of  latitude  further  to  the  north 
Lieutenant  Greely  lay  all  the  winter  in  his  wretched 
camp  at  Cape  Sabine,  his  men  dying  one  by  one  of  starva- 
tion while  the  ice  drifted  back  and  forth  in  Smith  Sound 
between  them  and  a  depot  of  provisions  upon  Lyttleton 
Island;  for  letting  himself  get  into  which  predicament 
he  has  been,  I  think,  unnecessarily,  or  at  least,  overvehe- 
mently,  denounced  by  some  not  acquainted  with  his  con- 
ditions— and  by  some  who  were.  I  am  sorry  to  see  Ad- 
miral Peary  returning  con  amove  to  the  charge  in  his 
latest  book,  The  Secrets  of  Polar  Travel.  It  was  not 
upon  his  first  Arctic  expedition  that  all  these  secrets  re- 
vealed themselves  to  the  discoverer  of  the  North  Pole. 

The  village  of  Point  Hope  clustering  as  it  does  about 
the  end  of  the  forefinger  of  the  spit,  with  easy  access 
to  both  shores,  one  is  surprised  to  find  the  church  and  the 
mission  school  and  the  missionary's  dwelling  upwards 
of  a  mile  away.  With  the  abandoned  government  school 
five  miles  away  at  Jabbertown  (where  no  one  any  longer 
jabbers)  and  this  mission  plant  withdrawn  so  far  up  the 
sandspit,  one  has  the  impression  of  an  infected  spot, 
from  close  contiguity  with  which  even  the  agents  of 
amelioration  discreetly  shrink.  The  impression  is,  of 
course,  false.  When  the  government  school  was  built 
there  was  a  school  population,  the  offspring  of  Negroes, 
Portugese,  Hawaiians,  Germans,  Irish,  English  and  I 
know  not  what  other  nationalities  and  Eskimo  wives, 
whose  fathers  made  a  living  by  whaling.  I  will  not  speak 
of  Vancouver's  "renegadoes"  any  more,  because  some 
of  these  people,  I  do  not  doubt,  were  very  decent  folk; 


POINT  HOPE  109 

married  and  settled,  even  ''renegadoes'*  may  make  use- 
ful, honest  citizens;  certainly,  some  on  these  coasts  de- 
serve no  such  term,  and,  whatever  their  antecedents  I 
found  nothing  but  kindness  from  any  of  them.  What  I 
have  written  in  general  condemnation,  however,  is  of  the 
record,  and  that  record  is  so  ample  that  I  could  fill  the 
pages  of  this  book  with  it  did  I  choose  so  to  burden  them. 
While  the  abortive  school  at  Jabbertown  is  thus  easily  ex- 
plained, I  was  never  able  to  reach  any  explanation  of  the 
isolation  of  the  mission,  unless  it  were  this:  that  when 
Dr.  Driggs  first  settled  at  this  place  there  was  a  fresh- 
water lake  hard  by  the  spot  where  he  built,  which  lake 
was  afterwards  turned  into  a  salt  lagoon  by  an  invasion 
of  the  sea  during  a  storm.  This  circumstance,  and  pos- 
sibly a  prudential  consideration  also,  in  view  of  the  riot 
and  licence  and  even  sometimes  drunken  homicides  that 
followed  the  visits  of  vessels,  in  view  of  the  murder  of 
Mr.  Thornton  of  Cape  Prince  of  Wales,  who  was  called 
to  the  door  and  shot  with  a  whale-gun  by  a  drunken 
Eskimo,  may  have  sufficiently  accounted  for  an  original 
withdrawal  which  now  finds  no  excuse  whatever  and  is 
distinctly  detrimental  to  the  efficiency  of  the  work.  Un- 
fortunately sites  once  adopted  are  with  great  difficulty 
abandoned,  and  every  additional  building  or  outhouse 
of  any  kind,  every  improvement  to  the  ** plant"  increases 
the  difficulty. 

That  was  one  of  my  first  reflections ;  there  followed  a 
strong  feeling  that  the  whole  plan  of  white  man's  build- 
ing on  the  coast,  government  schools,  churches,  stores, 
warehouses  and  residences,  is  fundamentally  wrong  and 
foolish.  With  his  usual  lack  of  adaptability,  the  white 
man  has  simply  reproduced  the  structures  he  was  used 
to  in  temperate  climes.  The  government  schools  here 
are  just  like  government  schools  anywhere  else,  unsightly 
and  incommodious.  The  whole  establishment  of  St. 
Thomas's  mission  looks  for  all  the  world  from  a  little 
distance  like  a  Manitoba  ranch,  with  its  dwelling,  its 
barns  and  its  windmill;  the  dwelling,  in  particular,  is 


110  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

lifted  clear  off  the  ground  and  the  wind  has  uninterrupted 
sweep  under  it;  the  schoolhouse  is  a  California  bunga- 
low. In  the  dwelling  a  thermometer  always  read  fifty- 
degrees  lower  when  put  upon  the  floor  than  when  put  up 
four  or  five  feet  upon  the  wall,  and  we  wore  our  fur  boots 
indoors;  while  in  the  schoolhouse — but  I  shall  come  to 
the  schoolhouse  later. 

I  am  convinced  that  the  only  wise  architecture  for  the 
Arctic  regions  is  the  Eskimo  architecture.  The  aim  of 
the  builder  of  any  structure  whatever  should  be  to  get  as 
much  of  it  underground  as  possible.  I  wish  I  might  have 
had  opportunity  to  try  my  hand  at  the  adaptation  of  that 
style  to  the  white  man's  requirements,  for  I  am  sure  that 
with  a  little  ingenuity  it  is  perfectly  practicable.  My 
dwelling  house  would  be  a  series  of  communicating 
apartments,  each  with  its  dome,  lit  by  a  gut  skylight. 
My  church  would  be  built  something  on  the  lines  of 
the  Mormon  tabernacle  in  Salt  Lake  City,  though  of 
course  in  miniature,  which  looks  like  a  collapsing  balloon, 
and  I  would  excavate  so  that  little  would  raise  above  the 
ground  but  the  domes  and  balloons,  from  the  smooth 
curved  sides  of  which  the  wind  would  glide  off  instead 
of  smiting  them  squarely  as  it  does  these  frame  struc- 
tures. The  difficulty  about  dampness  in  summer  could 
be  overcome  by  the  use  of  concrete,  and  by  proper  trench- 
ing. Indeed  I  think  the  principal  material  I  should  im- 
port would  be  cement.  The  whole  ** plant"  might  look 
a  little  as  Sydney  Smith  said  the  Prince  Eegent's  pavil- 
ion at  Brighton  looked,  as  if  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  had 
come  there  and  pupped,  but  it  would  not  look  bleak  and 
stark  and  comfortless  as  these  frame  buildings  do,  lift- 
ing themselves  gauntly  from  the  level  tundra  to  every 
blast. 

Glass  was  certainly  a  great  improvement  upon  the  in- 
tegumentary fenestration  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  but  it 
does  not  follow  that  it  is  an  improvement  upon  the  same 
primitive  device  of  the  Eskimos.  When  the  panes  of 
glass  are  plastered  thick  with  snow  by  every  storm,  they 


POINT  HOPE  111 

not  only  cease  to  be  transparent  but  become  actually  less 
translucent  than  seal-gut,  and  while  the  latter  may  be 
freed  from  frost  and  snow  by  tapping  with  the  hand,  the 
former  retains  its  incrustation  virtually  all  the  winter, 
and  a  skylight  is  far  and  away  more  copious  in  illumi- 
nation than  any  window  of  similar  size  in  a  wall.  When 
first  I  went  to  Texas  I  used  to  consider  barbed  wire  as 
an  invention  of  the  devil ;  and  since  I  have  resided  in  the 
Arctic  regions  I  attribute  storm-sashes  to  the  same 
agency.  Of  all  ineffective,  exasperating,  domestic  de- 
yices,  they  are  amongst  the  worst.  At  best  they  cut  down 
the  light  of  the  window  by  half ;  they  prevent  ventilation 
entirely,  or,  if  the  little  holes  bored  in  them  for  this  pur- 
pose, covered  with  a  slide,  be  once  used,  immediately  the 
whole  window,  inner  and  outer  sashes  alike,  becomes  im- 
penetrably coated  with  hoar  frost.  Double  glazing  of  a 
single  sash  is  very  much  better ;  if  properly  done  there  is 
no  condensation  of  moisture  into  hoar  frost  at  all,  and  so 
far  as  this  important  particular  is  concerned  they  stay 
perfectly  clear  all  the  winter,  and  thus  are  a  light-giving 
boon  to  dwellers  in  the  interior.  But  on  the  coast  it  is 
otherwise ;  the  snow  with  which  the  blizzards  are  charged 
drives  against  the  glass  just  as  I  have  seen  paint  or 
whitewash  driven  against  a  wall  from  a  hose ;  it  covers 
the  surface  almost  as  completely  and  adlieres  almost  as 
closely.  Glazed  sashes  might  be  used  during  the  summer 
and  replaced  by  gut-covered  frames  in  the  winter.  These 
comments  carry  no  invidious  reflection  upon  any  par- 
ticular builder,  since  all  buildings  along  the  coast  from 
Kotzebue  Sound  to  Point  Barrow,  ecclesiastical,  educa- 
tional or  mercantile,  come  under  the  same  condemnation. 
The  longer  I  stayed  at  Point  Hope,  the  more  I  con- 
trasted the  discomfort  of  the  dwelling  house  in  windy 
weather,  though  a  furnace  in  the  cellar  were  doing  its 
best,  with  the  cosiness  of  the  Eskimo  igloos  however 
fiercely  the  storm  might  be  raging,  though  warmed  by 
nothing  but  seal-oil  lamps,  the  more  convinced  I  grew 
that  all  the  builders  of  white  man's  structures  in  these 


112  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

parts  have  erred  in  not  taking  a  lesson  from  the  aborig- 
ines. Jnst  as  I  feel  that  log  buildings  are  the  only  build- 
ings for  the  forested  interior,  so  I  feel  that  the  plan  of 
the  domed  sod-house,  with  what  substitution  of  better 
material  experience  may  suggest  and  the  resources  of 
civilization  may  provide,  is  the  only  plan  for  Arctic  coast 
buildings.  Is  there  anywhere  in  the  world  that  the 
*' frame  house"  is  other  than  a  cheap,  inflammable  abomi- 
nation? 

A  young  clergyman,  earnest  and  enthusiastic,  the 
Keverend  William  Archibald  Thomas,  was  in  charge  of 
the  mission  at  Point  Hope,  having  the  previous  summer 
succeeded  the  Eeverend  A.  R.  Hoare,  who  had  spent  ten 
devoted  and  laborious  years  here  in  succession  to  Dr. 
Driggs — such  are  the  short  and  simple  annals  of  the 
place  in  this  respect.  When  Walter  and  I  returned  to 
Alaska  in  1916  Mr.  Thomas  had  accompanied  us,  and  we 
had  broken  our  journey  across  the  continent  to  spend 
ten  delightful  days  walking  through  the  Yellowstone 
Park  with  knapsacks  on  our  backs ;  and  were  not  only  ac- 
quainted but  attached.  Mr.  Thomas,  quite  unassisted, 
was  clergyman,  physician,  school-teacher,  postmaster 
and  general  vicegerent  of  Providence  in  local  affairs, 
besides  being  his  own  cook  and  housekeeper;  an  alto- 
gether impossible  piling  of  duties  on  any  one  man. 

The  Christmas  season  must  not  detain  us,  interesting 
and  enjoyable  as  it  was.  The  Christmas-tree  was  not 
without  a  certain  pathos;  it  consisted  of  a  number  of 
branches  of  stunted  willows  tied  together,  and  a  man  had 
gone  twenty-five  miles  inland  to  gather  even  this  poor 
semblance  of  a  tree,  so  naked  is  this  coast.  The  hearty 
feast  that  followed  the  hearty  church  service  (where 
seventy  natives  made  their  Christmas  communion)  was 
spread  with  fried  lynx,  boiled  seal  meat,  '*ice  cream"  of 
whipped  seal-oil  and  berries  (made  in  much  the  same 
general  way  as  the  Indian  "ice  cream"  of  moose-fat  and 
berries)  and  plenty  of  tea  and  hardtack. 

The  dancing  that  followed  was  very  interesting,  the 


POINT  HOPE  113 

most  expert  native  dancing  that  I  have  ever  seen;  two 
men,  then  three  men,  and  last  and  finest  exhibition  of  all, 
four  men,  moving  in  the  most  complicated  pre-arranged 
series  of  poses  and  gesticulations  and  in  the  most  per- 
fect unison,  to  the  accompaniment  of  drums  and  general 
chanting.  The  elaborate  involved  attitudes,  changed  with 
great  rapidity  and  instant  accord,  the  vivacity  and  spar- 
kle and  evident  thorough  enjoyment,  were  very  pleasing, 
and  to  save  my  life  I  cannot  understand  why  all  the  other 
missions  and  all  the  government  schools  should  make 
such  a  dead  set  against  this  harmless  amusement.  There 
is  no  more  offence  in  it  than  in  an  exhibition  of  Indian 
club  swinging.  Call  a  thing  ''barbaric,"  however,  in 
your  supercilious  way,  and  suppress  it,  seems  the  rule. 
One  remembers  Macaulay's  saying  that  the  Puritans 
suppressed  bear-baiting,  not  because  it  hurt  the  bear  but 
because  it  gave  pleasure  to  the  people,  and  one  suspects 
a  lingering  of  the  old  superstition  that  there  is  something 
essentially  wicked  in  merry  enjoyment,  which  I  take  to 
be  just  as  far  from  the  truth  as  any  sorcery  of  medicine 
men  can  be.  I  am  glad  that  this  Eskimo  dancing  is  not 
only  tolerated  but,  at  due  season,  encouraged  at  Point 
Hope. 

So  soon  as  normal  conditions  were  resumed  after  the 
holidays  I  relieved  Mr.  Thomas  of  most  of  the  school- 
teaching,  and  Walter  and  I  together  relieved  him  of  all 
of  the  housework;  in  return  for  which  he  gave  Walter 
an  hour  a  day  in  mathematics  and  another  in  Latin ;  the 
literature  and  history  instruction  continuing  as  before, 
supplemented  by  the  writing  of  a  daily  set  theme,  so  that 
the  three  of  us  were  quite  fully  occupied.  There  was, 
moreover,  for  Walter,  the  care  of  the  dogs,  including  the 
mission  team,  the  purchasing  and  cutting  up  of  seals  and 
the  cooking  of  the  flesh  with  rice  or  meal  for  them,  and 
presently  the  beginning  of  the  building  of  a  fine  new 
sled  with  which  to  replace  our  toboggan. 

The  first  of  January  was  Walter's  twenty-fifth  birth- 
day and  we  made  a  feast,  a  ptarmigan  apiece,  stuffed 


114  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

and  roasted,  roast  potatoes  and  green  peas,  with  a 
*' shortcake "  of  canned  strawberries  to  follow,  and  Mr. 
Thomas  set  the  table  with  twenty-five  little  red  Christ- 
mas candles  in  his  honour.  Thomas  gave  him  a  hand- 
some pair  of  native  reindeer-skin  boots  for  a  birthday- 
present.  That  night  we  finished  reading  Borneo  and 
Juliet  and  began  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  and  I  read 
aloud  for  an  hour  a  number  of  pieces  from  different  poets 
in  the  well-selected  mission  library.  A  very  happy  day, 
it  is  noted  in  my  diary,  and  a  day  that  I  shall  always 
remember.  Not  only  had  Walter  entirely  recovered  from 
his  sickness  but  he  began  to  look  more  stalwart  even  than 
before,  and  while  there  is  sometimes  truth  in  the  saying 
that  **two  is  company,  three  is  none"  it  was  not  so  with 
the  trio  at  the  mission. 

It  was  very  hard  for  me  to  think  of  Walter  as  a  grown 
man,  though  so  far  as  treating  him  as  such  is  concerned 
he  had  the  entire  management  of  all  our  travelling 
affairs,  which  during  the  last  two  winters  I  had  relin- 
quished to  him  with  much  comfort  and  relief,  but  he 
had  so  long  been  my  boy  as  well  as  my  pupil  that  he 
was  always  such  in  my  mind.  Indeed  there  were  few 
finer  specimens  of  manhood  to  be  found  anywhere,  in 
stature  or  in  general  physique,  and  he  not  only  attracted 
all  whom  he  met,  whites  and  natives  alike,  by  his  prepos- 
sessing appearance,  but  won  them  by  his  amiable,  gra- 
cious disposition.  I  think  Thomas  had  become  almost 
?    Tond  of  him  as  I  was. 

I  have  it  noted  in  my  diary  from  this  birthday-night 
eading  that  I  never  realized  before  how  very  uncertain 
and  corrupt  the  text  of  some  of  Shakespeare's  plays  is. 
Hitherto  the  possession  of  only  one  book  had  made  it 
necessary  for  me  to  look  over  Walter's  shoulder  as  he 
read;  now  at  the  mission  there  were  two  other  copies  of 
Shakespeare,  and  I  could  follow  in  one  while  Walter  read 
in  another.  But  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  and  in  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  I  found  myself  continually  checking  him 
for  mistakes  that  were  not  mistakes  but  variant  readings ; 


POINT  HOPE  115 

sometimes  whole  lines  would  be  different ;  sometimes  the 
sense  considerably  altered.  So  I  set  down  the  book  I  was 
using  and  took  the  second  mission  copy — and  lo!  still  a 
third  text,  differing  differently  but  almost  as  widely,  and 
I  was  compelled  at  last  to  look  over  his  shoulder  again. 
Of  course  all  this  is  well  known  to  Shakespeare  students, 
but  I  think  that  the  average  reader,  who  confines  his 
reading  to  one  edition,  would  never  suspect  the  extent 
to  which  the  text  varies  in  others,  nor  would  discover 
it  unless  two  or  three  editions  were  in  reading  at  once. 

Throughout  Christmas  week  the  finest,  calmest  weather 
prevailed,  and  the  old  natives  said,  as  usual,  that  they 
could  not  remember  so  long  a  spell  without  any  wind. 
When  we  sent  up  some  fire-balloons  on  Christmas  night, 
they  rose  almost  straight  up  to  a  considerable  height, 
and  drifted  so  slowly  inland  amidst  the  stars  that  they 
looked  like  yellow  stars  themselves. 

But  on  New  Year's  Day  came  the  wind,  which  gradu- 
ally rose  to  the  eight  days '  blizzard  I  have  already  spoken 
of,  and  never  again  during  our  stay  at  Point  Hope  was 
there  entirely  calm  weather.  On  the  2nd  January  school 
resumed,  and  for  three  weeks  together,  and  then,  after 
an  interval,  for  another  week,  I  made  the  close  acquaint- 
ance of  the  children  and,  through  them,  with  many  of 
the  parents.  School  and  the  storm  coming  together,  I 
was  at  once  impressed  with  the  hardship  imposed  upon 
the  children  by  the  distance  they  had  to  walk.  A  r  '\e 
and  a  quarter  or  so  is  no  great  matter  for  children 
tending  a  country  school,  but  when  every  step  of  that  dL 
tance  must  be  fought  for  against  a  blizzard,  it  is  a  dii- 
ferent  thing.  The  smaller  children,  of  course,  stayed  at 
home,  but  I  thought  the  fifteen  who  came  regularly  all 
that  week  were  the  bravest  children  I  ever  knew. 

The  California  bungalow  of  a  schoolhouse  was  not  im- 
pervious to  the  gale,  and  every  morning  the  fine  snow 
that  had  sifted  in  had  to  be  brushed  out;  the  little  stove 
was  inadequate  to  its  office  under  such  conditions,  and, 
worst  of  all,  the  coal  supply  was  short.    Every  pound  of 


116  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

it  came  in  sacks  from  somewliere  on  the  Pacific  coast, 
and  the  sacks  in  which  it  was  shipped  were  so  rotten  (due 
perhaps  to  war-time  scarcity  of  jute,  or  else  to  the  mere 
common  rascality  of  dealers  with  which  the  helpless  cus- 
tomers of  the  north  are  so  familiar,  for  which  the  war 
merely  serves  as  an  unusually  good  excuse)  that  fully 
a  third  of  it  had  been  lost  in  landing.  Since  no  more 
could  be  procured  until  the  next  summer,  and  the  supply 
had  been  rather  closely  calculated,  it  was  necessary  to 
exercise  a  rigid  economy.  The  children  sat  at  their  desks 
in  their  reindeer  parkees  and  boots;  even  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  day  in  their  fur  mitts  as  well;  their  breath 
rose  in  clouds  of  steam  and  I  had  to  let  them  come  in 
groups  of  three  or  four  to  warm  themselves  from  time 
to  time.  Lessons  that  involved  writing  were  impossible 
for  the  first  hour  or  two;  the  blackboards  would  be  so 
greasy  with  rime  from  the  condensation  of  breath  as  to 
be  unusable  could  numbed  fingers  have  held  the  chalk; 
so  that  reading  lessons  always  occupied  the  first  period. 
Children  more  docile  or  more  eager  to  learn  I  never 
knew,  and  some  of  them  were  quite  as  intelligent  as  any 
children  of  their  ages  I  have  ever  taught.  But  the  diffi- 
culties of  giving  instruction  in  an  unknown  tongue,  often 
with  regard  to  entirely  unknown  and  unimagined  things, 
are  very  great.  The  best  plan  for  such  a  school  is  to  have 
a  native  assistant  for  the  younger  children  who  can 
translate  into  their  own  language  the  names  of  things, 
and  I  did  constantly  so  employ  one  or  other  of  the  elder 
pupils,  which  was  not  entirely  fair  to  them.  I  am 
amused  when  I  read-  in  an  Arctic  school  report  that 
the  native  assistant  having  fallen  sick  or  died  or  gone 
off  to  get  married,  or  in  some  way  become  unavail- 
able, the  teacher  thinks  that  the  speaking  of  English  is 
** really  advanced  by  his  absence."  It  doubtless  is,  but 
the  understanding  of  English  is  quite  another  matter. 
The  ordinary  primers  and  readers,  dealing  as  they  do 
with  scenes  and  objects  utterly  foreign,  have  been  super- 
seded, in  part,  in  the  government  schools,  by  a  series 


POINT  HOPE  117 

written  especially  for  Eskimos,  but  not,  I  thought,  spe- 
cially well  done.  In  one  of  them  the  children  were  in- 
structed about  seals,  for  instance,  by  a  writer  who  knew 
much  less  of  those  interesting  mammals  than  the  chil- 
dren themselves.  Yet  for  beginners  I  should  deem  them 
preferable  to  the  ordinary  *' outside"  books  we  used  at 
Point  Hope.  Here  was  a  lesson  on  ''A  Day  in  the 
Woods, '^  and  here  were  children  who  never  saw  a  tree 
growing  in  their  lives  and  who  made  no  mental  connec- 
tion whatever  between  the  bleached  dead  trunks  washed 
up  at  times  on  their  shore  and  the  green  umbrageousness 
of  the  pictures.  Most  of  these  children,  I  am  sure, 
thought  of  driftwood  as  a  marine  product  like  seaweed. 
It  was,  of  course,  eminently  desirable  that  they  should 
be  set  right,  but  hardly  that  such  correction  should  attend 
their  first  steps  in  English. 

The  distinction  between  ''b's"  and  ''p's"  was  an  al- 
most insurmountable  difficulty,  lingering  even  with  the 
oldest  scholars.  One  bright  little  chap,  struggling  with 
such  exotic  matter  as  I  have  referred  to,  and  striving  for 
utterance  in  phrases  instead  of  disconnected  single  words, 
after  long  cogitation  delivered  himself  thus:  '*They — 
got — the  water:  from — the  bump."  Poor  little  chap! 
''Bump"  and  ''pump"  were  all  the  same  to  him;  they 
got  their  water  by  melting  the  ice  of  a  lake  five  miles 
from  the  village.  In  the  spring  and  early  summer  the 
pinnacles  of  the  jagged  sea-ice  on  the  shore  grow  fresh 
enough  for  use,  the  salt  draining  out  to  the  lower  layers, 
but  all  the  winter  through  they  must  take  the  dogs  and 
go  five  miles  for  water.  Bound  a  provident  igloo  you 
will  see  the  fresh-water  ice  stacked  up  for  future  use 
like  stove-wood  round  a  cabin  in  the  interior. 

The  "p"  and  "b"  difficulty  is  just  as  great  with  the 
natives  of  the  interior.  Shortly  before  I  left  Fort  Yu- 
kon I  had  a  letter  from  the  chief  of  the  Ketchumstocks, 
a  remote  band  between  Eagle  and  the  Tanana  Crossing 
which  I  had  visited  the  previous  winter,  written  by  the 
hand  of  a  youth  who  had  had  some  schooling  at  the 


118  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

former  place,  and  it  ran,  in  part,  thus:  "Archdeacon, 
please  bray  for  me ;  me  no  good  bray;  all  the  time  plenty 
like  speak  but  no  sabe;  you  all  the  time  strong  bray; 
please  bray  for  me" — and  I  present  it  with  my  compli- 
ments to  some  who  may  not  be  displeased  with  this  view 
of  the  " archdiaconal  functions."  Simple,  kindly,  tract- 
able folk,  whether  of  the  interior  or  of  the  coast,  groping 
in  dim  half-light  that  shall  brighten  more  and  more  unto 
the  perfect  day,  my  heart  long  ago  went  out  to  them,  and 
I  am  sorry  for  anyone  who  can  find  nothing  to  touch  him 
in  the  chief's  letter  but  the  blunder  of  his  amanuensis. 

With  the  older  scholars,  most  of  whom  were  of  the 
church  choir  and  sang  with  enthusiasm  a  goodly  collec- 
tion of  chants  and  hymns,  I  found  what  experience  had 
led  me  to  expect :  that  readiness  in  the  reading  and  pro- 
nouncing of  English  was  no  index  to  the  understanding 
of  the  same.  Here  was  a  boy  of  sixteen,  reading  in  an 
American  history  of  the  old  prejudiced  sort  that  we  have 
lately  grown  somewhat  ashamed  of,  but  that  served  him 
quite  as  well  as  the  most  impartial  chronicle  could  have 
done ;  reading  as  glibly  as  you  please,  so  that  I  was  grati- 
fied at  his  apparent  attainments.  When  the  first  day  I 
taught  him  he  read  that  ''the  flag  was  raised  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  thunders  of  artillery  and  the  strains  of 
martial  music"  I  stopped  him  more  from  force  of  habit 
I  think,  than  from  any  real  doubt  that  he  understood, 
and  asked  what  "artillery"  meant?  He  did  not  know; 
nor  did  he  know  what  "martial  music"  meant;  and  the 
thing  that  made  me  sorry  and  distrustful  was  that  he  did 
not  seem  to  care  much  whether  he  knew  or  not,  though 
proud  of  his  ability  to  read  so  well.  Then  presently  he 
went  on,  "King  George  threatened  to  hang  our  parrots" 
(for  patriots)  without  flinching  at  the  blunder,  and  I  re- 
flected that  in  any  hanging  of  parrots  Point  Hope  could 
not  be  overlooked.  As  soon  as  he  wrote  anything  at  all 
of  his  own  composition,  the  poverty  of  his  English  ap- 
peared. 

It  is  the  same  old  story :  the  facility  with  which  a  cer- 


POINT  HOPE  119 

tain  even  accurate  reading  of  a  language  may  be  ac- 
quired compared  with  the  difficulty  of  a  real  knowledge 
and  understanding  of  it ;  the  story  of  John  Milton  grow- 
ing blind  teaching  his  daughters  to  read  Greek  and  Latin 
aloud  to  him  without  knowing  what  they  read.  If  there 
were  this  contented  failure  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  sim- 
ple narrative  prose,  what  about  the  somewhat  involved 
meaning,  and  what  it  is  the  fashion  to  call  "archaic" 
diction,  of  verse?  And  if  these  best-instructed  youths 
failed  in  appreciation  of  what  they  sang,  what  about  the 
rest  of  the  congregation?  The  inevitable  answers  to 
these  questions — and  I  would,  with  all  respect,  press 
them  upon  such  as  are  concerned  with  them — did  but 
fortify  exceedingly  my  conviction  that  the  mother  tongue 
is  the  only  adequate  vehicle  for  worship,  and  I  am  en- 
couraged to  believe  that  the  clergyman  in  charge  at  this 
place,  of  sufficient  linguistic  training  and  scholastic 
habit,  now  that  he  is  relieved  of  the  school  by  an  assist- 
ant, will  set  about  gaining  such  a  knowledge  of  the  Es- 
kimo language  as  shall  enable  him  to  translate  the  liturgy 
and  hymnody  of  the  Church  into  it,  if  not  the  Scriptures 
themselves.  He  would  raise  himself  a  monument  more 
durable  than  brass  thereby.  There  must  be  extensive 
Greenland  translations  that  would  be  of  great  assistance, 
and  I  know  that  there  are  fragments  of  the  Scriptures 
on  this  coast  and  at  Herschel  Island. 

Let  me  say  emphatically  that  in  all  this  criticism  of 
the  attainments  of  the  children  is  intended  no  slightest 
reflection  upon  those  who  have  taught  them.  For  much 
the  most  of  the  ten  years  past,  and  for  all  of  the  eighteen 
years  before  that,  we  have  had  one  lone  man  here.  Did 
I  feel  that  despite  this  disclaimer  there  could  linger  in 
any  reasonable  mind  a  thought  that  my  remarks  involve 
disparagement  of  men  whose  labours  I  honour,  I  would 
strike  out  all  this  section  about  the  school  entirely, 
though  indeed  my  chief  purpose  is  to  illustrate  the  need 
of  a  teacher  who  shall  be  exclusively  a  teacher. 

On  the  7th  January  the  storm  abated  after  a  solid 


120  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT  ^ 

week  of  the  most  continuous  bitter  weather  I  ever  experi- 
enced in  my  life,  and  that  day  at  noon  the  children  joy- 
fully cried  out, ' '  The  sun !  the  sun ! ' '  Looking  out  of  the 
window,  there  he  was,  a  ruddy  globe  on  the  horizon,  very 
pleasant  to  see  after  a  month's  absence.  By  the  local 
calendar  he  should  have  returned  on  the  4th,  but  the  air 
had  been  too  full  of  driving  snow  to  see  him  until  today. 

When  I  had  become  well  acquainted  with  the  children 
and  the  weather  had  moderated,  I  used  to  take  walks 
down  to  the  village  and  round  about  it  with  some  of  the 
boys,  who  gave  me  the  name  of  the  occupant  of  each  habi- 
tation and  strove  very  hard  to  impart  general  informa- 
tion, so  that  I  was  soon  able  to  ''mark  well  her  bulwarks 
and  tell  all  the  towers  thereof."  We  strolled  through 
the  long-abandoned,  ruined  part,  and  the  boys  said, 
pointing  to  the  old  mounds,  "No  flour,  no  sugar,  no  tea; 
just  only  seal-meat  and  fish,"  in  commiseration  of  the 
hard  case  of  their  ancestors.  Out  upon  the  ice  we  went 
and  there  sat  a  man  jigging  for  t-om-cod  through  a  hole, 
with  a  considerable  pile  of  the  little  fellows  frozen  be- 
side him.  **My  father,"  said  one  of  the  boys,  and  then 
added  with  pride,  "councilman,"  and  I  was  glad  for  this 
evidence  of  civic  spirit.  Before  we  had  left  there  came 
an  Eskimo  hauling  a  dead  seal  behind  him,  the  little  three- 
legged  stool  on  which  he  had  sat,  maybe  for  hours,  be- 
side its  blow-hole,  strapped  to  his  back,  together  with 
his  gun  and  gaif  and  other  implements,  a  common  enough 
sight  in  these  parts;  and  the  boys  began  eagerly  to  tell 
me  which  of  themselves  had  killed  seals.  When  we  were 
at  the  extreme  end  of  the  spit  I  noted  that  it  was  the  most 
westerly  longitude  that  I  had  ever  reached,  or  on  thip 
journey  should  reach,  within  a  degree  and  a  half  of  the 
most  westerly  point  of  America,  and  within  thirteen  de- 
grees of  the  meridian  at  which  west  longitude  changes 
to  east  longitude  on  our  maps ;  in  latitude  we  were  well 
past  the  68th  parallel ;  so  that  I  was  at  once  further  west 
and  further  north  than  I  had  ever  been  before. 

On  another  occasion  I  had  with  me  Kerawak,  my  pet 


POINT  HOPE— JIGGING  FOR  TOMCOD. 
Tlu-  little  net  on  a  pole  is  used  to  keep  the  hole  free  from  ice. 


POINT  HOPE  121 

malamute,  and  as  I  saw  him  dig  in  the  beach  and  carry- 
something  from  the  place  in  his  mouth,  I  called  him  to 
find  what  it  was.  I  know  not  when  I  have  been  more  sur- 
prised than  to  find  it  was  a  star-fish.  The  last  star-fish 
I  had  seen  was  on  the  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  and  I 
had  always  associated  them  with  tropical,  or  at  least, 
temperate,  waters  and  knew  not  that  they  inhabited  the 
Arctic  Ocean  also.  Most  people  think  of  the  Arctic 
Ocean  as  remote  and  different  from  the  other  waters  of 
the  world,  so  different  in  all  respects  as  to  set  it  in  a 
class  by  itself,  and  I  had  shared  this  impression  in  large 
degree.  Yet  here  was  this  little  dead  creature  proclaim- 
ing the  contrary,  proclaiming  the  same  waters  and  the 
same  inhabitants  as  all  the  other  oceans  and  seas.  Each 
of  its  radiating  arms  seemed  to  claim  connection  and 
kinship  with  some  great  body  of  water  and  the  life  that 
swarmed  in  it :  this  with  the  Atlantic,  this  with  the  Pacific, 
this  with  the  Indian  Ocean,  this  with  the  Antarctic,  and 
once  again  I  was  struck  with  the  fundamental  unity  of 
things  underlying  all  superficial  diversity.  While  thus 
ruminating,  intending  to  carry  the  little  dried  specimen 
home  as  a  memento,  Kerawak  grabbed  it  from  my  hand 
and  ate  it  up.  It  was  his,  I  suppose,  since  he  found  it,  and 
there  is  not  much  in  the  animal  world  inedible  to  a  mala- 
mute dog — he  needed  no  lesson  to  teach  him  that  view  of 
the  essential  unity  of  things.  A  little  later  I  was  sur- 
prised to  find  crabs  so  common  as  to  be  a  regular  article 
of  diet.  I  knew  that  the  survivors  of  Greely's  expedi- 
tion lived  on  shrimps,  but  I  did  not  know  that  crabs 
crawled  in  these  waters. 

I  have  mentioned  the  well-selected  mission  library.  It 
was  a  pleasure  to  find  so  many  good  books  on  the  shelves, 
and  I  am  glad  to  vary  my  steady  diet  of  Gibbon  with  a 
re-reading  of  much  of  Motley,  several  volumes  of  Fiske, 
Justin  McCarthy's  History  of  Our  Own  Times  and  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  History  of  a  Crime.  I  remember  when  I  used 
to  think  Les  Miserables  the  greatest  novel  ever  written, 
but  a  maturer  acquaintance  with  Hugo  finds  more  to  repel 


122  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

than  attract.  Tlie  bombast  and  egotism  of  the  History 
of  a  Crime,  the  declamation,  the  pose,  the  ever-present 
self -consciousness,  had  the  effect  mainly  of  arousing  my 
sympathy  for  Napoleon  III ;  had  much  the  same  sort  of 
effect  on  me  that  the  reading  of  John  Knox's  History  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland  had  on  John  Wesley.  But  the 
prize  of  the  library  was  a  volume  of  some  considerable 
value,  I  judge,  from  a  collector's  point  of  view — Pierce 
Egan's  Life  in  London  with  coloured  prints  by  George 
Cruikshank.  The  discovery  of  this  book  brought  back 
my  boyhood  very  vividly,  for  I  once  heard  George 
Cruikshank  give  a  temperance  lecture  (which  I  have 
completely  forgotten)  and  was  taken  up  at  its  close  to 
shake  hands  with  the  veteran  caricaturist  and  reformer, 
a  little,  wizened  but  most  vivacious  old  man  who  danced 
about  the  platform ;  which  I  remember  very  well  indeed. 
Upon  our  walls  at  home  hung  some  of  his  clever  prints, 
full  of  action  and  character,  and  I  was  keen  to  meet  the 
man  who  had  drawn  them.  Here  in  the  Arctic  regions 
it  was  strange  to  come  upon  his  work  again,  and  the 
roistering  high  life  which  Pierce  Egan  depicts  with  so 
much  gusto,  with  its  Corinthian  Tom,  its  Vauxhall,  its 
Tattersall's,  struck  me  chiefly,  I  think,  from  a  sense  of 
its  wild  incongruity  with  my  present  surroundings.  Here 
was  its  fulsome  dedication  to  ''the  accomplished  gentle- 
man, the  profound  and  elegant  scholar,  the  liberal  and  en- 
lightened prince,  George  IV,"  then  newly  come  to  the 
throne;  God  save  the  mark! — one  grew  more  grateful 
upon  reading  it  to  Beau  Brummel  for  the  delicious  impu- 
dence of  "Who's  your  fat  friend?"  How  narrowly  the 
English  crown  escaped  ruin  from  that  rake's  wearing! 
Let  me  write  it  down  to  his  credit,  however,  that  Beechey 
declares  that  the  voyages  of  Parry  and  the  first  of  Frank- 
lin owed  much  to  his  ' '  enlightened  encouragement, ' '  and 
take  hope  that  this  also  is  not  mere  adulation  from  the 
circumstance  that  George  IV  was  dead  when  it  was 
written.  But  again  it  was  interesting  to  reflect  that  in 
meeting  George  Cruikshank  I  had  been  in  touch  with  a 


POINT  HOPE  123 

man  who  was  born  before  Louis  XVI  was  guillotined; 
whose  life  and  mine  together  bridged  the  gap  between 
the  French  and  the  Eussian  revolutions,  between  the 
Jacobins  and  the  Bolsheviki.  I  wonder  how  that  book 
came  to  Point  Hope!  I  should  like  to  write  an  essay 
some  day  upon  books  I  have  come  across  in  most  out-of- 
the-way  places. 

I  find  it  noted  on  the  13th  January  that  the  sun  was 
above  the  horizon  for  fully  two  hours,  although  he  is  not 
visible  at  all  until  the  4th ;  so  quickly  does  he  climb  once 
he  reappears.  On  that  day  Walter  and  Mr.  Thomas 
skinned  a  seal.  Hitherto  we  had  bought  them  skinned, 
for  the  current  price  of  a  medium-sized  seal,  $3,  is  re- 
duced a  dollar  if  the  vendor  keep  the  skin,  and  as  we 
used  only  the  flesh  for  dog-feed,  and  had  no  use  for  the 
skins,  we  had  bought  them  ready  to  cut  up.  But  it  was 
characteristic  of  Walter  that,  thinking  from  the  accounts 
we  had  received  of  the  scarcity  of  dog-feed  to  the  north 
it  was  likely  we  might  have  to  go  sealing  ourselves  by 
and  by  to  feed  our  dogs,  he  desired  to  familiarize  himself 
with  the  flensing,  which  differs  from  the  skinning  of  land 
animals.  Thomas  also  had  bought  his  seals  flensed,  but, 
ready  as  Walter  for  any  new  experience  that  would  im- 
prove his  Arctic  competence,  joined  in  the  task.  The 
skin  must  be  removed,  if  possible,  before  the  carcass 
freezes,  and  without  cutting  into  the  thick  layer  of  blub- 
ber just  beneath  it.  The  latter  is  no  easy  job,  nor  was 
it  successfully  performed ;  and  the  two  men,  and  the  back 
kitchen  where  the  deed  was  done,  reeked  with  blood  and 
oil.  Walter  had  it  set  down  in  his  diary  that  day,  ' '  Mr. 
Thomas  and  I  skinned  a  seal;  the  archdeacon  stood 
around  and  made  remarks" — which  I  certainly  did; 
never  was  kitchen  in  a  filthier,  viler  mess ;  the  stuff  froze 
on  the  floor  before  it  could  be  removed  and  for  days  I 
slipped  about  on  it. 

About  the  middle  of  January  came  a  wandering  fur- 
buyer,  long  used  to  traffic  on  this  coast,  gathering  up 
skins  which  might  escape,  or  for  which  he  might  outbid, 


124  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

the  local  traders,  and  intending  further  travel  above  as 
far  as  Icy  Cape  or  Wainwright;  of  some  Austrian  ex- 
traction or  other,  I  think,  and  though  most  of  his  life 
resident  in  America  retaining  his  original  broken  Eng- 
lish despite  an  immense  volubility.  An  expansive,  jovial, 
gross  sort  of  man,  full  of  news  and  stories,  carrying 
everything  with  great  heartiness  and  self-assurance,  I 
can  yet  hear  his  guffaws  of  boisterous  hilarity  breaking 
in  upon  our  studious  seclusion  and  rising  above  the  Arc- 
tic gale.  The  news  which  he  had  of  the  war,  two  weeks 
later  than  we  had  brought  with  us,  was  still  grave  and 
unfavourable.  According  to  him  the  Germans  and  Aus- 
trian s  were  overrunning  Italy: — "Dem  Dagoes  now  got 
to  eat  sauerkraut  instead  of  macaroni."  In  such  wise 
came  word  to  the  Arctic  coast  of  the  invasion  that  fol- 
lowed the  disaster  of  Caporetto.  To  a  direct  question  he 
was  loyal,  but  he  was  not  shedding  any  tears  over  the 
fate  of  *'dem  Dagoes." 

We  entertained  him — and  he  entertained  us.  After 
dinner  our  usual  work  lapsed  altogether  while  we  laughed 
at  his  anecdotes  and  reminiscences.  One  of  them  about 
a  trader  on  the  coast  I  thought  exceedingly  funny.  This 
man,  an  Englishman  from  a  ship,  I  think,  was  entirely 
illiterate  when  he  started  in  business,  though,  to  his 
great  credit,  he  afterwards  taught  himself  to  read  and 
write  and  keep  books.  But  at  first  he  used  a  system  of 
signs  and  hieroglyphics  for  the  articles  he  dealt  in  that 
no  one  but  himself  could  understand,  and  himself  some- 
times mistook.  He  had  charged  a  customer  for  a  cheese 
and  the  customer  denied  the  charge.  "But  it's  down 
'ere,"  said  the  trader,  pointing  to  a  circle  or  a  section 
of  cylinder  by  which  it  was  symbolized.  "I  don't  care," 
said  the  customer,  "I  ain't  had  no  cheese  and  I  ain't 
going  to  pay  for  none!"  **Well,  what  did  you  get  any- 
way?" "I  got  a  grindstone  you  ain't  charged  me  for." 
"Oh  sure,  that's  it;  it's  a  grindstone;  I  forgot  to  put  in 
the  'ole!" 

Pursuing  his  quest  further  north,  intending  to  reach 


WALTFR    IIARPF.R.  REV.    \V.    A.    THOMAS.  Til  F.    AfTH')|<- 

THF,  THRKl'.  AT  THE  POINT  HOPK  MISSION. 
(From  a  photograph  made  at  Dawson  a  year  and  a  half  before.) 


POINT  HOPE  125 

Icy  Cape  or  Wainwright  Inlet,  our  visitor  departed  and 
we  were  left  to  the  even  tenor  of  our  tasks  till  the  mail 
arrived  on  the  19th  from  Point  Barrow.  Three  times 
in  the  winter  a  mail  leaves  Point  Barrow  for  Kotzebue 
by  dog-team  and  returns  to  Point  Barrow,  taking  about 
a  month  each  way,  a  very  welcome  break  in  the  monotony 
of  that  long  season.  Since  the  only  regular  mail  of  the 
summer  above  Kotzebue  is  that  carried  by  the  revenue 
cutter,  the  dwellers  on  the  coast  are  really  better  off  as  to 
communication  with  the  world  in  the  winter  than  in  the 
summer.  The  mail  brought  word  of  bad  travelling  and 
great  scarcity  of  dog-feed. 

I  had  been  casting  about  for  guidance  to  Point  Barrow 
ever  since  we  arrived,  but  without  much  success.  Not 
only  was  there  no  one  anxious  to  go,  but  the  expense  of 
procuring  a  man  and  a  team  (he  would  need  a  team  for 
the  return)  would  be  very  considerable,  and  there  was 
the  scarcity  of  dog-feed  to  consider.  It  was  suggested 
that  we  follow  the  mail,  which  in  two  or  three  weeks 
would  return  from  Kotzebue  on  its  way  north,  and  con- 
tinue our  journey  with  it,  thus  dispensing  with  a  special 
guide,  and  this  seemed  the  most  likely  plan.  Mr.  Thomas 
talked  of  accompanying  us  as  far  as  Icy  Cape,  which  is 
more  than  halfway. 

The  fine  new  sled  was  made,  some  of  the  elder  school- 
boys having  helped  for  the  instruction  in  carpentering. 
It  was  built  along  coast  lines,  the  runners  extending  well 
to  the  rear  that  the  driver  may  stand  upon  them,  and  a 
vertical  bow  or  hoop,  which  the  hands  may  conveniently 
grasp  while  so  standing,  replacing  the  handlebars.  Such 
a  model  is  of  little  use  in  the  deep  snow  of  the  interior, 
where  the  leverage  of  the  handlebars  is  necessary  for 
swinging  the  sled  from  side  to  side  continually,  with 
which  operation,  moreover,  the  extended  runners  would 
greatly  interfere ;  it  is  a  model  that  has  grown  out  of  the 
coast  conditions  and  needs,  and  is  admirably  suited  to 
them.  There  was  a  convenient  toolshop  and  workshop 
at  the  mission — which,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  establish- 


126  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ment,  would  be  mucli  more  useful  to  the  natives  were  it 
nearer  their  abodes — and  this  served  for  everything  but 
the  steaming  of  the  bent  portions  of  the  woodwork,  an 
operation  which  must  be  conducted  where  continuous 
heat  was  available,  and  when  this  stage  of  construction 
was  reached  the  kitchen  was  continually  invaded  by  in- 
genious contrivances  for  the  application  of  steam,  and 
the  whole  house  hung  with  pieces  of  wood  constrained 
by  ligatures  to  the  retention  of  the  curve  which  had  thus 
been  given  them. 

Walter's  desire  for  a  polar  bear  was  almost  matched 
by  Mr.  Thomas 's,  and  on  several  occasions  they  snatched 
some  hours  to  wander  on  the  sea-ice.  I  took  it  upon  my- 
self to  prohibit  such  excursions  except  under  Eskimo 
guidance,  which  may  have  been  an  excess  of  caution,  but 
I  esteemed  them  as  not  without  danger  in  the  darkness, 
the  almost  constant  wind,  the  total  absence  of  landmarks. 
With  the  rapid  shifting  of  the  wind  that  we  had  several 
times  observed,  it  was  not  necessary  to  recall  the  cases 
we  had  heard  of  in  which  men  had  been  carried  out  to 
sea  with  the  pack,  to  realize  that  there  was  risk  in  ex- 
tended wandering. 

One  evening  there  came  word  that  a  polar  bear  had 
been  seen  crossing  the  sandspit,  and  since  there  was  a 
good  moon  and  it  was  comparatively  calm,  the  two  of 
them  decided  to  make  a  night  of  it.  An  old  experienced 
Eskimo  having  been  secured,  they  sallied  forth  about  ten 
o'clock,  leaving  me  sole  occupant  of  the  house,  who  was 
under  no  temptation  to  accompany  them. 

I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  I  am  lacking  in  what 
seems  amongst  writers  in  ''outdoor"  magazines  the  chief 
claim  nowadays  to  any  distinction,  the  possession  of  ''red 
blood."  I  suppose  Jack  London  is  the  literary  father 
of  all  such,  though  the  vein  he  worked  is  but  an  off- 
shoot from  that  main  modern  impulse-giver,  Rud- 
yard  Kipling,  the  wide  extent  of  whose  influence  is  con- 
tinually appearing  in  unexpected  quarters.  I  do  not 
think  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  his  generation,  or  Carlyle  in 


POINT  HOPE  127 

the  next,  had  as  great  general  influence  amongst  his  con- 
temporaries. By  how  much  Kipling  has  sped,  and  by 
how  much  has  merely  spoken,  the  spirit  and  thought  of 
the  times,  would  be  a  valuable  enquiry,  and  it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  stories  that  have  had  most  effect 
were  written  thirty  years,  and  almost  the  last  of  the  yet 
more  potent  verse,  full  twenty  years  ago.  Wliile  far 
from  charging  Kipling  with  Jack  London 's  crudities  and 
brutalities,  I  yet  think  the  influence  of  the  master  may  be 
seen  in  his  works  enough  to  warrant  the  relation  of  dis- 
ciple. 

At  any  rate  this  ''red  blood"  distinction  has  become 
as  much  an  obsession  as  "blue  blood"  ever  was,  and,  as 
far  as  I  can  gather,  it  means  simply  a  pleasure  in  shed- 
ding blood,  pleasure  at  the  sight  of  blood.  Without  it  no 
effort,  however  strenuous,  no  endurance,  however  pro- 
longed, no  pursuit,  however  resolute  and  single-eyed,  can 
rescue  a  man  from  the  character  of  effeminacy.  The 
stockbrokers'  clerks,  who,  I  am  told,  constitute  the  chief 
subscribers  to  these  "red-blooded"  magazines,  plume 
themselves  upon  their  unchallengeable  manliness  when 
they  have  slaughtered  a  deer  in  Maine  or  Vermont ;  their 
employers  claim  an  altogether  super-manliness  if  they 
kill  a  moose  in  Nova  Scotia,  while  the  Napoleons  of 
finance  themselves  are  as  proud  of  a  Kadiak  bear  as  of 
a  wrecked  railroad.  Since  I  am  quite  sure  I  have  no 
blue  blood,  and  these  gentlemen  would  deny  me  red,  I 
suppose  mine  must  be  green,  for  perhaps  no  man  ever 
had  better  opportunities  of  killing  North  American  big 
game — ^moose,  caribou,  mountain  sheep  and  bears — and 
killed  none.  Pleasure  in  watching  these  animals  in  their 
haunts,  pleasure  in  their  agility  and  strength  and  beauty, 
I  have  often  enjoyed,  but  there  is  no  pleasure  to  me  in 
destroying  all  these  fine  qualities  at  a  blow  from  a  ' '  reek- 
ing tube"  in  my  hand,  no  pleasure  in  watching  the  con- 
vulsive throbs  and  the  terror-stricken  eyes  of  a  splendid 
beast  in  his  death  agonies,  but  rather  strong  repulsion. 
I  have  no  objection  to  eating  of  the  spoils  of  the  chase, 


128  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

and  have  always  been  fortunate  enough  to  have  in  my 
company  one  who  was  eager  to  provide  them.  There  is, 
however,  some  slight  element  of  danger  in  hunting  a 
polar  bear  even  with  modern  repeating  rifles  which  gives 
a  zest  to  it  that  I  can  understand;  a  zest  quite  wanting 
in  the  killing  of  moose  and  caribou. 

What  I  lacked  in  this  respect  Walter  and  Mr.  Thomas 
quite  abundantly  made  up,  so  they  went  ofl  to  track  the 
polar  bear  and  left  me  alone  in  the  house.  The  night  be- 
fore we  had  talked  much  of  Dr.  Driggs,  his  long  work 
here  and  its  miserable  end.  There  is  no  doubt  that  his 
solitary  residence  had  told  upon  him  and  that  he  had  be- 
come mentally  unbalanced,  and  little  doubt  that  towards 
the  last  he  had  addicted  himself  to  the  use  of  drugs.  I 
cannot  see  any  good  in  hushing  up  such  matters.  'To 
acclaim  a  man  for  years  a  hero  in  the  high-flown 
manner  of  missionary  publications,  and  then  suddenly 
drop  him  and  mention  him  no  more  at  all,  is  likely 
to  rouse  a  suspicious  bewilderment  that  is  worse  than 
the  commiseration  that  would  follow  a  knowledge  of 
the  facts.  That  he  was  mentally  unbalanced  his  eccen- 
tric doings  and  sayings  establish,  and  that  he  feU  lat- 
terly into  a  use  of  stimulants,  I  think  very  likely.  Any- 
one who  has  spent  eighteen  years  alone  in  the  Arctic 
regions  and  has  retained  his  full  faculties  and  self-con- 
trol, is  entitled  to  throw  the  first  stone  at  his  memory,  I 
think,  and  no  one  else.  It  became  necessary  to  remove 
him,  there  is  no  question  about  that ;  and  there  can  be  no 
question  in  the  minds  of  those  who  know  the  Bishop  of 
Alaska  that  it  was  done  with  all  gentleness  and  tender- 
ness and  consideration.  I  warrant  he  had  rather  have 
cut  his  hand  off  than  do  it,  but,  as  we  say  in  the  north, 
''he  had  it  to  do." 

But  Dr.  Driggs  took  it  ill;  refused  to  accept  his  pas- 
sage out  and  retiring  in  dudgeon  some  twenty  miles  fur- 
ther up  the  coast  made  his  residence  with  an  Eskimo  fam- 
ily; venturing  a  little  income  of  his  own  in  a  native  whal- 
ing enterprise.    It  is  said  that  whenever  the  weather  per- 


POINT  HOPE  129 

mitted  he  would  continually  walk  the  beach,  looking 
towards  the  sandspit  which  had  been  his  home  so  long, 
muttering  and  gesticulating.  Here,  some  years  later,  he 
fell  very  ill.  Word  of  his  plight  came  to  his  successor  at 
Point  Hope  on  the  wings  of  a  gale  that  denied  return 
against  it  for  some  days,  and  when  it  was  possible  to 
travel  he  was  found  already  dead. 

The  change  at  Point  Hope  from  the  conditions  de- 
scribed by  Lieutenant  Commander  Stockton  to  those 
which  now  prevail,  is  largely  the  result  of  Dr.  Drigg's  la- 
bours, and  if  I  were  erecting  monuments  on  the  Arctic 
coast,  the  first  would  be  on  the  summit  of  Cape  Prince  of 
Wales  to  the  memory  of  Harrison  Thornton  of  Virginia, 
martyr,  and  the  next  would  be  on  the  sandspit  at  Point 
Hope  to  John  Driggs,  M.  D.,  of  Maryland.  I  should  like 
to  tell  something  of  the  stories  I  gathered  about  the 
drunken,  despotic,  polygamous  chief,  Ah-ten-o"\^-rah,  who 
ruled  this  community  by  terror  in  those  early  days, 
whose  hands  were  red  with  the  blood  of  many  of  his 
people  and  who  was  at  last  killed  as  the  result  of  a  con- 
spiracy. It  is  said  that  the  principal  men  of  the  place,  to 
rid  themselves  of  a  ruffian  of  whom  they  were  all  afraid, 
drew  lots  who  should  despatch  him,  and  that  the  one 
on  whom  the  lot  fell  shot  at  him  through  the  seal-gut 
window  of  his  igloo,  knowing  where  the  old  man  was 
wont  to  lie,  and  that  one  of  his  wives  who  was  in  the  plot 
plunged  a  knife  into  him  as  soon  as  he  had  been  shot. 
His  grave  stands  separate  from  all  the  rest,  marked  by 
two  gigantic  jawbones  of  whales,  the  largest,  it  is  said, 
ever  killed  by  Point  Hope  people.  All  the  above-the- 
ground  graves  have  of  late  years  been  removed,  the  bones 
gathered  and  buried  within  an  enclosure  fenced  around 
by  the  most  singular  fence  in  the  world,  I  think — of 
whales'  jawbones.  But  the  bloody,  defiant,  old  heathen's 
body  was  not  admitted  within  the  consecrated  precincts, 
and  lies  outside,  marked  by  two  jawbones  that  tower  over 
all  the  rest. 

It  was  into  such  scenes  that  Dr.  Driggs  entered  when 


130  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

he  landed  at  Point  Hope  and  started  a  school.  How 
very  slowly  and  gradually  he  made  an  impression  upon 
the  people  and,  little  by  little,  won  their  confidence  and 
respect;  how  many  times  his  own  life  was  in  danger; 
how  many  times  his  hopes  were  dashed,  his  efforts  seem- 
ingly in  vain;  how  at  length  he  began  to  prevail  until 
he  was  able  to  lead  the  people  whither  he  would;  these 
things  must  be  imagined  by  those  who  are  not  willing 
to  dig  them  out  of  many  years'  brief  contributions  to 
missionary  publications.  I  am  able  to  put  my  hand 
upon  one  disinterested  tribute  to  Dr.  Driggs.  The  ex- 
plorer Mikkelsen  (of  whom  more  later)  wrote  in  1907: 
*'He  is  beloved  in  the  village,  and  the  young  men  and 
women  look  upon  him  as  a  father  who  does  all  he  can  to 
make  the  people  for  whom  he  has  sacrificed  his  life  a 
useful  and  self-dependent  race."  * 

My  mind  was  full  of  these  things,  and  especially  full  of 
Dr.  Driggs,  his  faithful  labour  and  his  miserable  end, 
when  the  two  young  men  went  polar  bear  hunting  and 
left  me  alone  in  the  house.  I  read  awhile  in  a  desultory 
way  and  then  went  to  bed.  Meanwhile  the  wind  had  risen 
again  and  whistled  and  whined  about  the  house,  and  a 
loose  dog,  I  think,  had  crept  for  shelter  between  the  floor 
and  the  ground  and  made  strange  noises.  Again  and 
again  after  I  had  put  out  my  light  I  started  up  in  bed 
thinking  that  I  heard  footsteps  below.  Most  stairs  creak 
when  they  are  trodden  upon,  but  some  have  the  miserable 
habit  of  creaking  without  being  trodden  upon,  and  the 
mission  house  stairs  were  of  that  kind.  Frequently  I 
was  sure  I  heard  someone  coming  upstairs  and  entering 
the  little  room  across  the  hall  from  mine.  I  listened  and 
listened — and  lay  down  again,  already  creepy  and  afraid. 
But  my  mind  instead  of  composing  itself  to  sleep  brought 
up  visions  of  the  old  doctor,  in  ragged  and  dishevelled 
Arctic  attire,  pacing  the  beach  near  Cape  Lisbume,  rais- 
ing his  clenched  hand  against  Point  Hope  and  those  who 
had  dispossessed  him.    I  was  taken  with  the  notion  that 

*  Conquering  the  Arctic  Ice,  p.  373. 


POINT  HOPE  131 

he  would  not  lie  quiet  until  his  bones  had  been  translated 
to  the  place  where  his  life  work  was  done.  Presently  I 
dozed  off  and  dreamed,  and  the  same  haggard  figure  rose 
before  me,  grew  gigantic  and  ghastly,  gnashing  its  teeth 
and  slavering,  and  I  started  awake  with  the  feeling  that 
someone  was  entering  my  room.  Looking  at  the  door  in 
the  faint  light  that  filtered  from  the  moon  through  double 
sashes  obscured  by  encrusted  snow,  I  was  certain  that  it 
was  moving,  that  very  slowly  it  was  opening,  and  then 
that  someone,  something,  was  in  the  room  with  me.  The 
wailing  of  the  wind  took  a  tone  of  human  despair  that 
pierced  my  excited  brain  and  for  awhile  I  lay  in  an  agony 
of  fright,  utterly  unnerved  and  abject.  I  suppose  there 
are  others  who  can  remember  similar  visitations  of  sense- 
less terror  in  the  watches  of  the  night,  even  since  their 
childhood,  but  this  was  the  most  vivid  and  unnerving  ex- 
perience of  the  kind  I  have  ever  had.  I  have  not  con- 
sciously tried  to  heighten  it,  but  only  to  describe  what  it 
requires  no  effort  a  year  after  to  recall.  I  never  saw  Dr. 
Driggs  in  life,  but  the  unshaven,  dishevelled,  minatory 
figure  in  greasy  ragged  furs  of  my  dream,  is  stamped  in- 
delibly on  my  mind.  Presently  I  recovered  myself,  but 
with  a  resolution  that  I  would  never  be  left  alone  at  night 
in  that  house  again.  And  I  should  really  like  to  know 
that  Dr.  Driggs 's  body  had  been  translated. 

The  hunters  returned  in  the  morning  empty-handed, 
having  taken  refuge  in  a  little  hut  built  on  the  bank  of 
one  of  the  lagoons  as  a  resort  for  fowling  in  the  summer, 
which  they  happened  to  be  near  when  the  wind  arose, 
and  where  they  spent  a  miserable  night  although  it  was 
provided  with  a  stove  and  some  fuel.  They  had  been  as 
sleepless  as  I. 

I  have  lingered  at  Point  Hope  beyond  my  intent, 
though,  I  am  afraid,  not  beyond  my  habit.  So  many  in- 
teresting things  crowd  to  my  mind  from  the  suggestions 
in  my  diary  that  I  could  fill  this  book  without  leaving 
Point  Hope,  granted  a  reasonable  discursiveness ;  and  it 
is  hard  to  realize  that  things  that  appear  so  interesting 


132  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

to  me  may  hot  have  the  same  appeal  to  a  reader.  There 
is  one  other  incident  I  should  like  to  record  before  the 
journey  is  resumed — one  that  unfortunately  did  not  in- 
terest me  enough.  An  excellent  little  monthly  publica- 
tion of  the  Bureau  of  Education  at  Nome,  called  The 
Eskimo,  had  offered  prizes,  or  was  understood  to  have 
offered  prizes,  for  English  transcriptions  of  native  leg- 
ends by  native  hands;  and  some  interest  had  been  ex- 
cited in  the  matter  at  Point  Hope.  One  day  while  Mr. 
Thomas  was  attending  to  postal  matters  and  I  was  sit- 
ting reading  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic  beside  him, 
there  entered  a  young  man  who  had  been  encouraged  to 
attempt  such  a  transcription,  with  a  manuscript  book  in 
his  hand.  Mr.  Thomas  was  all  interest  and  attention  at 
once  and  asked  me  to  listen,  and  the  young  man  began 
to  read.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  Indian  and  Eskimo 
legends  know  their  interminable  length  and  monotony. 
Their  chief  characteristic  seems  to  be  lack  of  all  point 
and  purpose.  They  have  neither  beginning,  middle,  nor 
end,  and,  once  launched,  there  seems  no  reason  why  they 
should  ever  stop.  I  had  heard  many  similar  stories  from 
Indians ;  years  ago  Walter  had  told  me  what  he  remem- 
bered of  them.  They  have  a  certain  ethnological  value 
for  comparison  with  similar  stories  from  other  Eskimo 
people,  from  Indians;  as  giving  some  slight  evidence  of 
common  or  different  origin  and  perhaps  throwing  a  little 
light  on  possible  migrations;  very  slight  and  not  to  be 
built  upon  at  aU,  I  should  judge — did  not  David  Living- 
stone find  that  the  stories  he  heard  around  camp  fires  in 
South  Africa  were  wonderfully  like  those  told  him  in  his 
childhood  by  his  Hebridean  grandfather? — yet  perhaps 
giving  a  measure  of  corroborative  force  to  some  view 
otherwise  sustained.  It  is  partly  upon  the  ground,  for 
instance,  of  the  frequent  references  to  Ar-ki-li-nik  in 
Greenland  legends  of  widely  separated  tribes,  as  I  un- 
derstand, that  the  region  northwest  of  Hudson  Bay  is 
regarded  by  many  as  the  original  home  of  the  Eskimos, 
and  the  view  of  a  general  westerly  rather  than  easterly 


POINT  HOPE  133 

migration  of  these  people  along  tlie  north  coast  of  Amer- 
ica, which  seems  to  prevail  in  ethnological  circles  today, 
is  based  upon  a  close  examination  of  many  such  stories, 
and  other  similar  philological  evidence  of  dialects  and 
place-names.  Historical  or  literary  interest  they  have 
none. 

I  listened  for  awhile  until,  through  the  broken  English 
which  at  first  kept  my  attention  in  the  effort  to  under- 
stand, I  perceived  that  this  story  was  of  the  same  old 
kind.  When  the  man  had  got  up,  started  a  fire,  boiled  a 
fish  for  breakfast  and  travelled  along  the  coast  all  day  a 
dozen  times  over,  the  thing  became  a  burden,  and  rather 
shamefacedly  I  let  my  eyes  drop  to  the  book  in  my  lap, 
Motley's  heroic  Dutchmen  at  least  meaning  something 
and  attempting  something.  I  thought  I  detected  a  turgid- 
ness,  especially  about  the  early  part  of  Motley,  that  I  had 
not  associated  with  it  upon  a  reading  many  years  before ; 
some  sort  of  echo  of  Carlyle,  perhaps? — some  influence 
of  the  dithyrambs  of  the  French  Revolution?  I  won- 
dered if  it  were  so,  or  if  I  were  growing  finical  and  hyper- 
critical. Gibbon  perhaps  spoiling  me  for  any  who  can- 
not carry  their  learning  so  lightly.  I  suppose  I  had  been 
reading  half  an  hour,  the  voice  still  wearily  droning 
along,  the  man  still  going  to  bed  and  arising  and  cooking 
his  breakfast  and  his  supper,  meeting  an  occasional  old 
woman  and  exchanging  some  cryptic  remarks  with  a 
raven  or  a  hare,  rolling  stones  from  the  mountain  upon 
the  igloos  of  people  who  were  unkind  to  him,  when, 
happening  to  look  up,  I  saw  that  Thomas  was  fast  asleep 
in  his  chair.  At  the  same  moment  the  young  man  looked 
up  and  saw  the  same  thing,  and  our  eyes  thereupon 
meeting,  we  burst  into  laughter  which  woke  Thomas  to 
join  in  our  merriment.  The  good  nature  of  the  Eskimo 
is  what  struck  me  most  forcibly.  There  was  no  chagrin 
at  the  result  of  his  laborious  literary  effort,  but  merely 
amusement  at  Mr.  Thomas's  expense  that  it  had  put 
him  to  sleep.  It  was  the  same  young  man  who  had  sent 
a  letter  a  few  days  before,  beginning  in  the  most  formal 


134  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

way,  *'Dear  Reverend  Friend,  Sir,"  and  thereupon 
plunging  into  the  utmost  familiarity  with,  ''Say, 
Thomas." 

Mr.  Thomas  had  planned  a  visit  to  Kivalina  towards 
the  end  of  January,  hoping  then  to  be  free  to  visit  Icy 
Cape  with  us,  and  we  decided  to  accompany  him  in  this 
preliminary  excursion  to  the  south,  leaving  on  the  23rd. 
It  did  indeed  seem  like  tempting  Providence  to  put  our- 
selves deliberately  south  of  Cape  Thomson  again,  but 
the  natives  went  freely  back  and  forth,  taking  their 
chances  of  detention  and  making  the  best  of  it  if  it  came. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  re-describe  the  journey,  but  an 
incident  at  the  close  of  the  first  day's  run  may  show  the 
violence  of  the  wind  and  the  difficulties  which  glare  ice 
may  cause.  We  had  reached  the  vicinity  of  the  cape 
and  were  intending  to  spend  the  night  at  an  igloo  just 
north  of  it.  Little  more  than  the  width  of  a  lagoon  sep- 
arated us  from  this  habitation,  but  to  cross  this  lagoon 
we  had  to  turn  almost  squarely  into  the  wind,  which  had 
swept  and  polished  the  ice  so  that  the  dogs  could  get  no 
footing  and  therefore  could  exert  no  traction.  Walter 
went  ahead  with  a  rope  tied  round  his  waist  and  to  the 
harness  of  the  leader.  Again  and  again  we  were  blown 
right  back  to  the  beach,  despite  all  our  efforts.  Here  and 
there  across  the  quarter  of  a  mile  or  so  of  ice  were  little 
patches  of  hard  snow  that  adhered  to  its  surface.  With 
infinite  labour,  blowing  back  two  feet  for  every  three  feet 
advanced,  we  managed  to  reach  the  first  of  those  snow- 
islands.  It  happened  most  inopportunely  that  the  ice- 
creepers,  which  had  not  been  used  before  this  winter  but 
would  have  been  invaluable  now,  were  left  behind,  and  a 
hasty  search  in  the  hand-sack  having  revealed  this,  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  repeat  the  process  until  the  next 
patch  of  snow  was  reached.  Here  Walter  turned  loose 
two  of  the  dogs  which  were  not  only  not  pulling — none  of 
them  was  pulling — but  were  actually  pulling  back,  and  it 
was  funny  to  see  them  swept  bodily  away  by  the  wind, 
squealing,  until  they  brought  up  at  a  snow  patch  and 


NATURAL  ARCH  AT  CAPI',  THOMPSON. 


POINT  HOPE  135 

there  stood  and  howled.  While  I  looked  back  in  amuse- 
ment and  thus  turned  myself  sideways  to  the  wind,  a 
large  black  silk  kerchief  was  whipped  out  of  the  pocket 
on  the  breast  of  my  parkee  and  carried  off  instantly  and 
irrecoverably.  The  wind  was  not  cold,  or  we  could  not 
have  faced  it  at  all,  but  so  persistently  violent  that  it 
took  us  two  hours  to  cross  the  lagoon  from  snow  patch 
to  snow  patch.  Mr.  Thomas  had  been  unable  to  cross 
at  all  and  was  preparing  to  make  such  camp  as  he  could 
until  the  wind  moderated,  when  Walter,  our  team  safely 
across,  went  back  to  help  him  while  I  took  my  dogs  and 
sled  on  to  the  igloo ;  and  a  long  while  after  they  reached 
it  also.  Had  the  wind  been  behind  us  we  should  have  gone 
flying  before  it,  but  on  such  glassy  surface  it  is  next  to 
impossible  to  make  any  progress  against  the  wind.  The 
next  morning  there  was  wind,  but  it  was  fair  for  doubling 
the  cape  and  we  passed  it  with  ease,  and  had  almost  the 
same  experience  on  our  return,  so  that  three  times  that 
winter  we  passed  and  repassed  the  cape  without  any 
trouble  at  all — a  piece  of  good  fortune  that  we  were 
very  thankful  for. 

The  three  days  that  we  spent  at  Kivalina  as  the  guests 
of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Reese,  the  school-teacher  and  his  wife, 
were  full  of  interest.  The  night  of  our  arrival  the  school- 
house  was  crowded  with  Eskimos  and  we  held  service  and 
spoke  to  the  people  through  the  excellent  local  inter- 
preter. After  the  service  I  was  forced  again,  by  the  late 
foolish  marriage  law  of  the  territorial  legislature,  into 
the  position  of  a  law-breaker.  That  law  requires  a 
license  before  any  marriage  may  be  solemnized,  and  a 
personal  application  to  a  United  States  commissioner 
before  a  license  can  be  procured.  I  do  not  think  the 
scattered  natives  entered  into  the  heads  of  the  legis- 
lators at  Juneau  when  this  law  was  devised,  but  it  is  so 
drawn  that  it  applies  to  them  without  exception.  Here 
were  three  couples  waiting  to  be  married;  waiting,  that 
is,  in  the  usual  native  way ;  waiting  for  the  ceremony  but 
not  waiting  for  the  cohabitation.    One  of  the  couples,  a 


136  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

fine  young  man  and  woman,  had  made  a  journey  to  Point 
Hope  to  get  married  before  Christmas,  knowing  that 
there  was  a  clergyman  there.  But  Mr.  Thomas  had  been 
informed  of  the  new  law  by  the  judge  at  Nome  and  had 
been  warned  not  to  perform  any  marriages  without  a 
license.  Now  there  is  no  commissioner  at  Point  Hope 
and  none  at  Kivalina,  and  that  winter  there  was  none  at 
Kotzebue.  The  nearest  commissioner  was  at  Candle  on 
the  Seward  peninsula,  about  200  miles  from  Kivalina  and 
nearly  300  from  Point  Hope ;  and  these  are  not  the  native 
settlements  in  Alaska  most  remote  from  such  officials, 
so  that  it  will  be  seen  what  a  hardship  this  law  imposes. 
Of  another  couple,  the  man  was  a  cripple,  incapable 
of  the  long  journey  unless  he  were  hauled  all  the 
way  in  a  sled,  and  in  the  third  case  a  baby  was  soon 
expected. 

It  is  in  the  highest  degree  unwise  to  make  the  marriage 
of  natives  difficult ;  it  will  mean  simply  the  reversion  to 
the  old  state  of  things  which  the  missionaries  for  a  gen- 
eration have  been  striving  to  abolish.  One  of  the  reasons 
for  my  long  winter  journeys  every  year  is  to  provide 
opportunity  at  remote  mission  stations  where  there  is  no 
resident  clergyman,  and  amongst  the  scattered  native 
communities,  for  the  Christian  marriage  of  those  who 
would  otherwise  have  none.  I  had  grave  doubts  as  to 
the  competency  of  the  territorial  legislature  to  pass  such 
a  law  touching  the  "uncivilized  tribes"  of  Alaska,  who, 
by  the  terms  of  the  treaty  with  Kussia,  are  the  direct 
wards  of  the  federal  government,  doubts  which  the  dis- 
trict attorney  whom  I  consulted  shared,  but  a  long  and 
careful  letter  to  the  department  of  justice  at  Washington 
remained  unanswered  and  unnoticed,  and  so  remains  to 
this  day.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  it  seems  that  the  de- 
partment of  justice  is  too  busy  with  politics  in  Alaska  to 
attend  to  little  matters  like  that. 

Bishop  Eowe  had  offered  during  the  previous  summer 
to  make  a  test  case  under  this  law  but  the  district  attorney 
in  the  interior  had  replied  that  the  test  would  have  to  be 


POINT  HOPE  137 

made  in  another  judicial  district  as  he  should  decline  to 
prosecute  unless  ordered  to  do  so  from  Washington. 
And  that  is  how  the  affair  stood  at  the  time  of  which  I 
write. 

The  matter  has  wider  bearing  than  perhaps  ap- 
pears; it  is  largely  bound  up  with  our  wretched  system 
of  primary  justice.  No  one  would  object  to  the  require- 
ment of  a  marriage  license  if  the  same  were  easily  pro- 
curable, but  under  the  present  system  in  Alaska  it  is  not 
possible  to  provide  the  necessary  facilities.  To  the  best 
of  my  knowledge  Great  Britain  and  Alaska  are  the  only 
countries  in  the  world  whose  magistrates  are  without 
stipend.  But  in  the  former  country  is  a  class  of  local 
gentry  glad  to  serve  the  state  without  pay  for  the  honour 
of  the  king's  commission  under  the  great  seal  and  the 
authority  that  it  brings,  while  in  the  latter  the  office  goes 
begging,  and  is  often  filled  by  wholly  unsuitable  persons 
for  lack  of  any  other.  Such  emolument  as  attaches  to 
the  office  accrues  from  fees,  and  in  remote  places,  and 
particularly  in  native,  or  predominantly  native,  settle- 
ments, the  fees  are  so  inconsiderable  as  to  be  negligible 
and  the  office  cannot  be  filled  at  all,  or  only  as  an  ap- 
panage to  some  other  calling.  There  is  no  greater  need 
in  Alaska  than  the  abolition  of  the  whole  system  of  un- 
paid commissioners  and  the  substitution  of  a  body  of 
stipendiary  magistrates  of  character  and  education; 
which  has  been  pointed  out  and  urged  by  all  those  who 
have  considered  the  matter  for  the  last  twenty-five  years. 

Respect  for  the  law  is  ingrained  in  me  by  every  cir- 
sumstance  of  breeding  and  bent  of  mind,  and  I  resent 
being  forced  into  the  position  of  a  law-breaker;  but  I 
should  have  been  false  to  a  higher  law  than  that  of  the 
Alaskan  legislature  had  I  passed  by  and  refused  the 
solemnization  of  matrimony  to  those  anxious  for  it,  with 
no  impediment  thereunto,  and  left  them  still  in  concu- 
binage, leaving  children  to  bear  the  stigma  of  illegiti- 
macy, now  just  beginning  to  bo  felt  by  our  native  peo- 
ples.    So  that  night  I  laid  myself  liable  to  cumulative 


138  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

penalties  of  fifteen  hundred  dollars  in  fines  and  three 
years  in  gaol. 

Besides  being  school-teacher,  Mr.  Reese  was  superin- 
tendent of  a  large  reindeer  herd,  as  is  usual  with  teachers 
on  the  Arctic  coast,  and  since  he  had  held  the  same  offices 
at  a  village  on  the  Seward  peninsula  and  was  very  intel- 
ligently alive  to  the  needs  of  the  Eskimos  and  had  made 
special  study  of  the  reindeer  experiment  in  particular, 
I  was  glad  of  an  opportunity  to  pick  his  brains. 

There  is  no  need,  I  think,  to  speak  of  the  domestica- 
tion of  reindeer  amongst  Eskimos  as  an  experiment  any 
longer;  it  has  been  entirely  successful;  and  the  man  to 
whose  foresight  and  energetic  persistence  the  introduc- 
tion of  these  animals  into  Alaska  is  due,  must  always 
rank  high  amongst  the  practical  philanthropists  of  the 
world. 

Dr.  Sheldon  Jackson  saw  very  plainly  upon  his  first 
visit  to  the  Arctic  coast,  in  1890  (when  the  three  schools 
were  established  that  have  been  referred  to),  that  the 
economic  condition  of  the  Eskimo  was  critical.  The  wild 
caribou  that  had  roamed  the  coast  lands  were  gone, 
slaughtered  since  the  introduction  of  firearms  by  the 
whalers ;  the  whales  and  other  marine  animals  were  rap- 
idly diminishing.  He  saw  that  to  establish  schools 
amongst  a  starving  people  was  useless.  He  saw  more- 
over that  the  reindeer  herds  amongst  the  nomadic  tribes 
on  the  Siberian  side  of  Bering  Straits  gave  them  an 
unfailing  food  supply,  and  he  decided  that  it  would  be 
immensely  to  the  advantage  of  his  own  Eskimo  charges 
were  they  similarly  provided. 

Now  the  ordinary  official  thus  seeing  and  deciding 
would  have  laid  the  matter  before  Congress  and  would 
have  considered  his  responsibility  thereby  ended.  Year 
after  year  he  would  have  returned  to  the  subject  and 
would  have  wasted  his  eloquent  pleas  on  the  desert  air 
of  reports  that  no  one  read.  But  Dr.  Jackson  was  not 
an  ordinary  official.  When  the  first  application  to  Con- 
gress proved  unavailing,  he  did  not  sit  down  and  wait. 


POINT  HOPE  139 

He  knew  that  nothing  succeeds  like  success,  and  that  if 
he  could  stir  public  opinion  by  the  sight  of  something 
done,  on  however  small  a  scale,  he  would  have  much  bet- 
ter chance  of  moving  Congress  to  do  it  on  a  larger  scale. 
So  he  appealed  for  private  subscriptions,  and  succeeded, 
with  the  few  thousand  dollars  thus  raised,  in  purchasing 
a  herd  of  sixteen  deer  in  Siberia  and  transporting  them 
to  Unalaska  in  the  summer  of  1891.  The  next  year,  Con- 
gress having  again  failed  to  appropriate  any  money,  he 
bought  more  deer  in  the  same  way  and  carried  them 
across  to  the  Seward  peninsula.  And  when  it  was  thus 
proved  that  live  reindeer  could  be  obtained,  could  be 
transported,  and  could  thrive  on  the  Alaskan  coast,  Con- 
gress came  tardily  forward  and  appropriated  a  little 
money.  It  now  became  possible  to  procure  expert 
herders  from  Lapland  who  could  impart  to  Eskimo 
apprentices  the  technique  of  deer  raising  and  herding, 
and  the  experiment  was  thus  started  towards  the  success 
it  has  attained. 

There  are  now  some  80,000  deer  in  Alaska,*  the  greater 
part  on  the  Seward  peninsula,  though  there  are  herds  as 
far  north  as  Point  Barrow  and  some  in  the  interior  as 
far  up  the  Yukon  as  Holy  Cross.  They  have  not,  as  yet, 
done  as  well  in  the  interior  as  on  the  coast,  nor  does  it 
seem  likely  that  they  will,  but  there  is  no  longer  any  ques- 
tion about  the  great  blessing  they  have  brought  to  the 
Eskimos. 

In  the  last  year  or  so  the  Lapps  have  been  permitted 
to  sell  the  herds  they  have  gradually  acquired  (about 
18,000  head)  and  a  company  of  white  men  at  Nome  has 
purchased  them,  hoping  to  establish  an  export  trade  in 
refrigerated  meat,  and,  at  any  rate,  sure  of  the  market 
which  Nome  and  its  mining  district  afford.  The  difficul- 
ties in  the  way  of  the  export  trade  are  considerable :  for 
economical  handling  the  deer  should  be  concentrated  at 
one  point  of  easy  access  to  ships,  and  butchered  there, 
but  this  is  not  practicable  because  all  the  moss  in  the 

*  Probably  when  this  is  read,  nearer  150,000. 


140  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

neighbourhood  would  soon  be  eaten  off;  while  if  driven 
from  a  distance  the  deer  would  be  poor.  But  we  need 
not  worry  about  the  difficulties  of  the  export  trade ;  they 
do  not  trouble  the  Eskimos. 

The  same  circumstance,  however,  that  the  food  of  the 
reindeer  is  confined  to  a  single  species  of  moss,  is 
fraught  with  many  difficulties  to  the  whole  business  of 
reindeer  herding.  The  pasturage  in  any  locality  is 
partly  exhausted  in  one  year's  grazing,  and  wholly  in 
two,  and,  unlike  grass,  it  takes  four  or  five  years  to 
recover  and  renew  itself.  It  is  not  only  necessary  to 
change  the  grazing  grounds  continually,  but  the  tendency 
is  for  them  to  retreat  further  and  further  from  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  villages  and  from  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  coast.  Between  Kivalina  and  Kotzebue,  for  instance, 
a  distance  of  ninety  or  an  hundred  miles,  there  is  no 
good  grazing  near  the  coast;  it  has  all  been  eaten  off, 
and  Kivalina  reindeer  men  having  business  at  Kotzebue 
must  borrow  or  hire  a  dog-team  to  make  the  journey. 
Another  difficulty  about  using  reindeer  for  travel  is  that 
the  creatures  cannot  stand  up  on  the  smooth  ice  of  the 
lagoons  that  skirt  so  much  of  this  coast.  Glare  ice,  as 
I  have  shown,  is  sometimes  very  difficult  even  for  dogs 
to  travel  upon,  but  at  other  times  it  affords  the  most 
desirable  surface  in  the  world  and  permits  the  rapid 
travelling  which  at  first  astonishes  the  visitor  from  the 
snow-covered  interior  country.  But,  wind  or  calm,  the 
reindeer  cannot  walk  upon  smooth  ice,  and  whereas  a 
dog  does  not  hurt  himself  in  the  least  by  hundreds  of 
falls,  one  may  suppose  that  the  larger  animal  would  be 
in  danger  of  breaking  a  leg  or  bruising  himself  severely 
every  time  he  came  heavily  down.  These  considerations 
may  explain  why  in  our  whole  circuit  of  the  Arctic  coast, 
although  we  were  several  times  amongst  the  reindeer 
herds  and  very  many  times  amongst  reindeer  herders, 
we  saw  deer  hitched  to  a  sled  only  once. 

It  is  true  that  long  journeys  are  made  with  reindeer. 
The  energetic  and  enthusiastic  superintendent  of  schools 


POINT  HOPE  141 

and  herds  in  these  parts,  Mr.  W.  S.  Shields,*  to  whose 
zeal  so  much  of  the  progress  of  this  industry  is  due,  has 
travelled  upwards  of  11,000  miles  with  them  in  the  course 
of  his  seven  or  eight  years'  work.  But  I  suppose  he 
would  not  deny  that  by  far  the  greater  part  of  these 
journeys  could  have  been  made  much  more  conveniently 
and  expeditiously  with  dogs.  There  is  a  certain  esprit 
de  corps  amongst  those  in  "the  service,"  the  arousing  of 
which  is  not  the  least  valuable  or  creditable  part  of  Mr. 
Shields 's  work,  that  forbids  the  use  of  dogs  to  the  white 
men  concerned  with  reindeer,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that 
much  inconvenience  is  cheerfully  put  up  with  to  encour- 
age the  Eskimos  to  use  their  deer  for  draught  purposes 
and  to  abandon  the  dog  altogether. 

The  tendency  of  deer  herding  to  retreat  from  the  coast 
since  the  virgin  moss  grows  better  and  better  the  further 
the  herds  go  back,  and  the  benefit  of  allowing  the  ani- 
mals to  range  freely  as  against  the  policy  of  close  herd- 
ing, alike  militate  against  the  schools,  which  can  be 
maintained  nowhere  save  at  the  settlements  along  the 
coast.  Man  is  as  naturally  gregarious  as  reindeer,  and 
the  village  that  he  calls  home  exerts  a  strong  attraction 
upon  the  Eskimo.  Again  and  again  it  is  necessary  to 
"chase  the  herders  back  to  their  herds."  "Why  comest 
thou  down  hither,  and  with  whom  hast  thou  left  those 
few  deer  in  the  wilderness?"  is  often  asked  as  pointedly 
of  them  as  Eliab  asked  of  David  concerning  his  father's 
sheep.  Said  Mr.  Eeese — from  whose  lips  most  of  what 
is  here  written  about  the  reindeer  was  set  doA\Ti  in  my 
diary — "The  herd  boys  come  in  and  are  anxious  to  go 
to  school,  but  I  know  that  the  herds  are  suffering  by 
their  absence  and  I  have  to  insist  upon  their  return.  I 
know,  too,  that  the  men  will  not  be  contented  away  from 
their  wives  and  families  and  it  is  much  better  that  they 
should  be  out  at  the  herds  too." 

The  most  important  article  furnished  by  the  reindeer 

*  I  learn  with  much  regret  since  writing  the  above  that  he  died  of  the 
influenza  in  Nome  in  the  fall  of  1918. 


142  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

is  the  fur  clothing  made  from  his  skin.  Other  sources  of 
meat  there  are:  the  whale,  the  seal,  the  walrus,  the 
ooguruk  (or  giant  seal)  and  many  varieties  of  fish,  fur- 
nish food;  but  there  is  no  other  source  of  the  indispen- 
sable furs.  Eeindeer  hides  used  to  be  imported  from 
Siberia,  but  of  late  an  embargo  has  been  laid  upon  them, 
for  what  reason  I  could  not  discover,  and  there  is  noth- 
ing whatever  that  takes  the  place  of  deerskin.  Now  that 
the  wild  caribou  that  swarmed  over  this  coast  and  its 
hinterland  are  exterminated,  I  do  not  know  if  the 
Eskimos  could  survive  without  the  reindeer;  so  amply 
is  Sheldon  Jackson's  foresight  vindicated,  so  is  Wisdom 
justified  of  her  children.  One  wishes  her  progeny  were 
more  plentiful.  Let  me  add  but  this:  the  total  amount 
appropriated  by  Congress  for  the  introduction  and  care 
of  reindeer  amounts  to  something  over  $300,000.  The 
estimated  value  of  the  deer  in  Alaska  today  is  over 
$3,000,000. 

While  the  reindeer  feed  only  on  reindeer  moss,  they 
often  develope  perverted  appetites,  and  I  was  amused  to 
hear  that  they  sometimes  kill  and  eat  the  ptarmigan  out 
of  snares  set  by  the  herders,  and  constantly  rob  the 
ptarmigan  nests,  eating  up  the  eggs  greedily.  Some  deer 
are  said  to  eat  heartily  of  dried  fish,  but  they  cannot 
digest  it,  and  the  animals  with  such  appetites  do  not 
thrive. 

One  of  the  interesting  measures  set  on  foot  by  Mr. 
Lopp  and  his  deputy,  Mr.  Shields,  for  the  encouragement 
of  the  industry  is  the  institution  of  reindeer  fairs  at  dif- 
ferent points  within  the  coast  territory.  Here  prizes 
are  offered  for  sled-deer  races,  for  rifle-shooting,  for  the 
best  made  fur  garments,  the  best  kept  sled-deer,  the  best 
sleds  and  harness,  for  expedition  in  roping  and  hitching, 
and  for  many  similar  superiorities  that  tend  to  stimu- 
late rivalry  and  improve  methods.  Herders  and  their 
families  gather  from  hundreds  of  miles  around,  and  the 
opportunity  is  taken  of  giving  instruction  and  training; 
an  excellent  plan  that  has  already  secured  good  results, 


POINT  HOPE  143 

perhaps  as  much  in  arousing  a  general  feeling  of  Eskimo 
racial  solidarity  and  identity  of  interest,  aforetime  al- 
most entirely  lacking,  as  in  the  wide  diffusion  of  a 
knowledge  of  reindeer  husbandry.  Such  a  fair  was  to 
be  held  in  March  at  Noatak,  on  the  river  of  that  name, 
and  I  should  certainly  have  attended  had  it  been  possible 
to  do  so  and  still  carry  out  the  main  design  of  my 
journey. 

Here  at  Kivalina  one  was  face  to  face  with  the  other 
great  Eskimo  problem,  the  problem  of  fuel.  The  depend- 
ence here  is  altogether  upon  driftwood,  which  grows 
increasingly  scarce  year  by  year.  Mr,  Reese  told  me 
that  it  took  the  ordinary  family  a  full  day  in  every  week 
to  gather  fuel  for  the  other  six.  In  former  times  the 
driftwood  was  not  used  for  fuel  and  it  accumulated  in 
seemingly  inexhaustible  piles.  It  could  not  be  used  in 
the  igloos  until  sheet-iron  stoves  were  introduced;  the 
sole  fuel  was  seal-oil  burned  in  soapstone  lamps,  but  with 
the  use  of  stoves  came  the  rapid  diminution  of  the  drift- 
wood, the  annual  renewal  of  which,  depending  on  the 
accident  of  winds,  does  not  in  any  case  equal  the  con- 
sumption. There  will  be  occasion  to  return  to  this  sub- 
ject, which  is  almost  always  an  anxious  one  in  Eskimo 
communities  today. 

Another  visit  to  the  school,  fresh  from  my  own  teach- 
ing experiences  at  Point  Hope,  left  me  under  no  doubt 
of  the  superior  advancement  of  these  children.  By  what 
miracle  could  it  be  otherwise?  Here  was  a  trained 
teacher,  given  wholly  to  teaching,  with  a  most  helpful 
wife,  not  only  to  keep  house  for  him  but  to  aid  him  in 
every  way  in  his  work.  Yonder,  all  these  years,  had  we 
kept  a  single  man,  primarily  a  physician  or  a  clergyman, 
with  no  special  training  or  aptitude  for  the  schoolroom; 
with  all  sorts  of  other  duties,  and  with  outlying  places 
to  visit  in  the  execution  of  those  duties,  to  whom  teaching 
was  of  necessity  a  secondary  thing.  Indeed  had  it  been 
Froebel  or  Pestalozzi  himself  so  situated,  the  school 
must  have  suffered.    It  hurt  my  pride  that  this  govern- 


144  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ment  school  was  manifestly  better  than  our  Church 
school,  coming  from  the  interior  country  where  the 
reverse  is  usually  true,  but  what  wisdom  is  there  in  shut- 
ting one's  eyes  to  facts  because  they  are  not  pleasant? 
I  am  thankful  that  we  have  now  a  school-teacher  at  Point 
Hope  in  addition  to  a  clergyman. 

Our  last  night  at  Kivalina  remains  vividly  in  my  mind. 
It  was  one  of  those  rare  and  lovely  Arctic  nights  that 
seem  fairy-like  and  unreal  to  a  visitor  from  other  climes, 
that  seem  more  like  the  result  of  some  transformation 
scene  in  an  old-fashioned  Drury  Lane  pantomime,  if  I 
may  revert  to  childish  memories  again.  It  is  strange 
that  utterly  different  scenes  should  give  rise  to  the  same 
reflection.  Once  when  walking  through  the  less  fre- 
quented parts  of  the  Austrian  Tyrol  (I  wonder  to  what 
country  it  will  belong  when  the  Peace  Congress  has  done 
its  work!)  as  we  opened  a  valley  surrounded  by  the 
most  fantastic  dolomite  peaks,  with  every  romantic 
accessory  of  distant  glacier  and  cataract,  of  near-by  lake 
and  chalet,  my  companion  stopped  short  and  exclaimed 
*'My  word! — it's  like  a  drop  scene  at  a  theatre!" — and 
though  the  comparison  appear  unworthy  it  was  also  in 
Goldsmith's  mind  when  he  wrote  of  "woods  over  woods 
in  gay  theatric  pride. ' '  It  seemed  too  romantic,  too  beau- 
tiful, to  be  real.  So  I  think  do  some  stories  of  exceptional 
characters  under  exceptional  circumstances  seem  unreal 
to  critics  who  would  tie  all  literature  down  to  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  average. 

Now,  in  the  silence  and  solitude  of  the  Arctic  coast  I 
was  conscious  of  the  same  impression.  Thomas  and  I 
walked  out  over  the  level  shore-ice  to  the  first  pressure 
ridge,  and  climbing  to  the  summit  of  a  great  egregious 
block,  turned  round  and  surveyed  the  scene.  There  was 
not  a  breath  of  wind;  the  sky  was  as  blue  as  the  sky 
of  Italy,  and  a  moon  almost  at  the  full  sailed  serenely 
above,  yet  instead  of  extinguishing  the  stars  allowed 
them  to  sparkle  in  almost  undimmed  lustre  and  in  such 
countless  myriads  as  the  more  humid  atmosphere  of 


POINT  HOPE  145 

milder  climes  never  reveals.  A  most  vivacious  green 
aurora  twined  its  tenuous  streamers  in  and  out  amongst 
the  constellations  remote  from  the  moon.  To  seaward 
the  ice  of  the  successive  ridges,  heaped  into  jagged 
mounds,  tossed  into  pinnacles,  glittered  and  shimmered, 
while  here  and  there  a  slab  of  clear  ice  gave  back  the 
moonbeams  like  a  mirror.  Shoreward  the  white  sea  and 
the  white  earth  blended  indistinguishably  and  stretched 
interminably,  and  at  the  site  of  the  village  there  twinkled 
a  few  points  of  yellow  light  like  incandescent  topazes.  A 
most  delicate  yet  brilliant  blue  and  silver  the  picture  was 
done  in,  under  the  soft  splendour  of  the  ample  moon, 
with  the  sheen  of  moving  malachite  in  the  aurora  above 
and  the  diamond  scintillation  of  the  stars. 

The  scene  did  not  fade  away  as  one  felt  that  a  glimpse 
of  fairyland  should  fade  away;  the  lights  were  not 
turned  down  behind  the  transparency;  yet,  what  was  the 
same  thing,  we  had  to  leave  it  very  shortly.  The  cold  of 
a  clear  Arctic  night  does  not  permit  the  long  contempla- 
tion of  any  scene,  however  lovely. 

The  remainder  of  the  evening  was  also  very  interest- 
ing and  pleasant.  Jim  Allen,  the  veteran  whaler,  came 
over  to  the  house  and  gave  us  a  long  and  very  interesting 
account  of  ''flaw  whaling,"  which  is  quite  distinct  from 
the  whaling  carried  on  by  ships,  and  exhibited  the  shoul- 
der gun  and  the  darting  gun  and  the  other  appliances  of 
the  craft.  I  cannot  find  the  word  ''flaw" — save  in  gen- 
eral as  a  crack  or  fissure — applied  to  ice,  and  have  been 
told  that  the  term  should  be  "floe,"  but  the  floe  is  the 
floating  ice  of  the  pack,  and  "flaw  whaling"  is  carried  on 
at  the  edge  of  the  ice  fixed  to  the  shore,  and  not  from  the 
floating  ice;  so  that  I  think  Jim  Allen's  use  is  correct. 
Again  I  miss  my  History  of  Whaling.  But  I  shall  defer 
what  it  is  necessary  to  say  about  this  native  industry 
until  later. 

Here  I  had  our  sleeping-bags  and  fur  breeches  made, 
being  able  to  procure  the  necessary  August  skins  which 
do  not  shed  their  hair,  of  which  there  was  lack  at  Point 


146  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Hope,  so  that  we  were  now  provided  in  clothes  and  bed- 
ding. Here  also  I  was  able  to  procure  two  hundred 
pounds  of  dried  fish  for  dog-feed,  and  thus  relieve  my 
anxiety  about  the  feeding  of  the  dogs  for  the  earlier  part 
of  the  northern  journey.  So  we  went  back  to  Point 
Hope  much  heavier  laden  than  we  came,  our  prepara- 
tions for  departure  well  advanced.  In  passing  Cape 
Thomson  we  had  to  give  its  bluffs  a  wide  berth,  for  the 
waters  of  a  high  tide  issuing  from  the  tide-crack  had 
overflowed  all  the  ice  near  the  shore.  The  wind  and  driv- 
ing snow  (fairly  behind  us)  completely  obscured  the 
promontory,  so  that  when  we  judged  we  had  doubled  it 
and  turned  our  course  towards  land  again,  we  found 
that  we  had  gone  much  further  off  shore  than  we  had 
supposed.  Had  the  wind  suddenly  shifted  we  should 
have  been  in  no  little  danger,  the  ice  around  this  cape 
driving  in  and  out  all  the  winter  through,  sometimes  with 
very  brief  warning.  Indeed  we  were  glad  to  be  done  with 
Cape  Thomson ;  whatever  unknown  perils  the  coast  might 
have  in  store  weighing  less  than  the  known  peril  of  this 
passage. 

Yet  I  was  glad  of  our  visit  to  Kivalina;  the  cordial 
hospitality  of  Mrs.  Reese,  no  less  than  the  open-minded, 
instructive  intercourse  with  her  husband,  remaining  very 
pleasantly  in  my  memory.  There  was  a  teacher  who 
''waited  upon"  his  teaching;  who  sought  outside  the 
beaten  track  of  the  text-book  and  established  methods,  for 
means  to  make  his  teaching  effective.  There  I  saw  trans- 
lation of  Eskimo  stories  into  English  and  then  the  re- 
translation  of  them  into  Eskimo  with  much  interest  and 
much  amusement  upon  comparison;  there  I  saw  English 
diaries  faithfully  kept  by  school  children,  a  most  useful 
exercise;  saw  a  whole  community  of  children  actually 
taught  to  speak  and  write  English;  yet  with  a  total 
absence  and  indeed  contempt  of  the  dragonnades  against 
the  native  tongue  aired  in  their  annual  reports  by  teach- 
ers zealous  to  be  thought  zealous.  There  also  was  a  man 
studious  not  indeed  of  Eskimo  ethnology  so  much  as  of 


POINT  HOPE  147 

present  Eskimo  economics,  patiently  watchful  of  re- 
sources and  of  expedients  for  their  utilization,  observant 
of  changing  conditions  and  of  the  accommodation  of  his 
people  to  them;  a  very  valuable  man,  I  judged,  to  the 
Bureau  of  Education  and  certainly  to  the  Eskimo  people, 
growing  more  valuable  with  every  added  year's  experi- 
ence; a  man  who,  in  the  language  of  one  of  his  white 
neighbours,  "saws  wood  all  the  time  but  don't  let  off  no 
fireworks."  I  did  him  the  justice  to  wish  that  I  might 
have  spent  a  week  in  his  school  before  starting  my  own 
teaching  at  Point  Hope. 

The  large  amount  of  food  for  man  and  beast  we  had 
to  carry  from  Point  Hope  seemed  to  necessitate  the  pur- 
chase of  four  more  dogs,  if  we  were  to  have  two  good 
teams;  to  which  necessity  I  was  reluctantly  brought;  for 
there  was  no  disappointment  that  the  Arctic  coast  had 
in  store  for  me  as  great  as  the  discovery  of  how  poor  and 
mongrel  was  the  general  run  of  the  native  dogs.  The 
malamute  has  always  been  my  favourite  sled-dog,  and 
the  Arctic  coast  was  the  home  of  the  malamute.  I  had 
expected  that  such  reinforcement  of  our  teams  as  might 
be  necessary  would  provide  me  with  fine  dogs  of  this 
breed  to  take  back  to  the  Yukon.  I  found  the  breed 
almost  extinct  in  any  pure  strains,  so  much  intermingled 
with  "outside"  breeds  that  the  majority  of  native  dogs 
I  saw  had  lost  all  the  marked  malamute  characteristics. 

There  was  never  in  the  world  a  domestic  animal  more 
admirably  fitted  to  its  environment  than  the  malamute 
dog,  the  one  objection  to  his  use  in  the  interior,  the  short- 
ness of  his  legs  in  deep  snow,  not  being  valid  where  the 
snow  never  lies  deep.  He  is  the  hardiest,  the  thriftiest, 
the  eagerest,  the  most  tireless,  the  most  resolute  and  the 
handsomest,  if  not  of  all  the  dogs  in  the  world,  certainly 
of  all  dogs  used  for  draught,  and  his  feet  never  grow 
sore.  Certainly  he  is  quarrelsome;  indeed  he  is  inveter- 
ately  pugnacious ;  but  a  dog  is  a  dog  and  not  a  lamb,  and 
there  are  collars  and  chains,  are  there  not?  and  whips 
and  clubs.    Dog  driving  is  not  a  drawing-room  pastime. 


148  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

It  is  a  man's  own  fault  if  his  dogs  have  much  chance 
for  destructive  fighting;  the  usual  tearing  of  head  or 
ears  does  not  matter  much ;  it  is  only  when  the  * '  running 
gear"  is  injured  that  a  dog's  wound  becomes  a  serious 
thing.  And  the  man  who  says  the  malamute  is  incapable 
of  affection  has  never  really  made  his  acquaintance;  he 
is  fully  as  affectionate  as  any  dog. 

Whether  or  not  it  be  true  that  horse-racing  has  been 
largely  instrumental  in  improving  the  breeds  of  horses, 
it  is  certainly  true  that  dog-racing  is  chiefly  responsible 
for  the  decay  of  the  malamute  dog.  This  sport,  insti- 
tuted at  Nome,  to  provide  factitious  excitement  and  op- 
portunity of  gambling  for  miners  and  lawyers  during 
the  long,  dull  winter,  has  developed  dogs  of  wonderful 
sustained  speed  over  long  distances — at  the  sacrifice  of 
all  the  hardy  qualities  that  are  essential  for  genuine 
Arctic  work.  The  sport  has  a  literature  of  its  own,  if 
one  be  not  too  particular  as  to  the  connotation  of  that 
term,  and  those  who  may  wish  to  learn  about  it  will  find 
it  described  in  a  book  called  Baldy  of  Nome,  which 
depends  for  any  other  interest  it  may  have  upon  the 
attribution  to  dogs  of  impossible  human  emotions  and 
perceptions  in  the  usual  ''nature-faking"  way,  of  which 
I  suppose  Black  Beauty  is  the  classic  example. 

The  coast  was  scoured  for  all  the  best  malamute 
bitches  for  crossing  with  bird  dogs  and  hounds  and  such 
exotics  in  the  effort  to  secure  speed,  and  the  product  of 
the  Nome  kennels  was  scattered  again  over  the  coast. 
For  some  time  past  malamute  strains,  I  am  told,  have 
been  quite  abandoned,  and  a  winning  team  that  I  met 
two  years  ago  on  the  trail  seemed  to  have  reverted  to 
something  like  the  whippet  type,  as  might  have  been  ex- 
pected. These  dogs  are  pampered  and  coddled  like  race- 
horses ;  are  housed  and  blanketed  every  winter  night  and 
fed  upon  minced  chicken  and  beefsteak  and  I  know  not 
what  dainties — and  sometimes  win  for  their  owners  and 
backers  large  sums  of  money.  For  any  real  Arctic 
travelling,  he  who  reads  the  pages  that  follow  may  judge 


POINT  HOPE  149 

of  their  suitability.  They  would  freeze  to  death  in  the 
first  blizzard.  But  the  malamute  dog  has  been  virtually 
bred  out  of  existence  to  make  a  Nome  holiday,  and  the 
Eskimos  of  the  Arctic  coast  have  as  sorry  a  lot  of  curs 
left  as  the  Indians  of  the  interior.  One  of  the  things 
that  the  missionaries  on  the  coast  should  seriously 
attempt  is  the  restoration  of  the  malamute;  there  is  no 
one  else  to  do  it. 

I  am  confident  that  my  readers  would  share  my  feel- 
ing could  they  have  stood  and  looked  at  the  half-dozen 
or  so  dogs  that  Walter  had  gathered  up  around  the  vil- 
lage; the  best  that  were  offered  for  sale.  A  good  half  of 
my  own  dogs  were  malamutes,  four  of  them  carefully 
bred  at  the  army  post  at  St.  Michael  by  a  post  surgeon 
who  had  spent  some  years  there,  and  upon  the  comple- 
tion of  his  Alaskan  service  had  very  kindly  sent  them 
up  the  Yukon  to  me,  desiring  to  be  assured  of  their  good 
treatment  now  that  he  was  done  with  them;  a  welcome 
as  well  as  a  gracious  gift  at  a  time  when  my  team  needed 
new  blood.  For  two  years  they  had  been  its  backbone. 
Another  had  been  bought  at  the  army  post  at  Tanana  on 
the  Yukon.  Still  another  was  not  yet  quite  a  two-year- 
old  who  had  come  across  with  Eskimos  from  the  Colville 
river  to  the  Big  Lake  and  there  had  been  traded  to 
Indians  who  had  brought  him  to  Fort  Yukon,  where  I 
had  purchased  him  as  soon  as  I  saw  him — paying  for 
the  precipitancy  as  well  as  the  pup,  I  have  no  doubt. 
David  Harum  would  probably  have  got  him  for  ten  dol- 
lars less.  I  had  not  intended  to  work  him  much  but 
took  him  along  more  to  play  with.  After  the  death 
of  ''Moose"  on  the  Kobuk,  however,  we  had  put 
''Kerawak"  into  the  harness,  and  he  worked  so  well 
and  so  eagerly  that  he  had  been  in  the  harness  ever 
since.  There  are  some  hens,  I  am  told,  the  main  motive 
of  whose  life  is  a  consuming  passion  to  lay  eggs;  and 
there  are  some  dogs  who  as  soon  as  they  can  run  display 
a  passion  to  pull ;  they  take  to  the  harness  as  naturally 
as  a  spaniel  to  the  water.    I  wish  that  those  who  think 


150  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

of  sled-dogs  as  driven  by  the  whip  to  hard  distasteful 
toil  could  see  Kerawak  when  a  team  ahead  of  him  has 
started.  There  is  almost  no  holding  the  little  beast.  He 
will  strain  at  the  collar  and  dig  his  claws  into  the  snow : 
he  will  rear  up  with  a  jerk  and  endeavour  with  all  his 
might  to  start  the  heavy  sled  all  by  himself,  whining  and 
squealing  at  the  top  of  his  voice  as  who  should  say, 
* 'We're  going  to  be  left  behind!  we're  going  to  be  left 
behind! — can't  you  see  them? — they're  gone!  they're 
gone,  I  say ! ' '  And  one  had  to  keep  one 's  foot  squarely 
on  the  brake,  so  that  the  iron  teeth  engaged  the  hard 
snow,  to  prevent  a  premature  start.  He  never  got  over 
it;  gaunt  and  hungry  on  the  north  coast,  the  starting  of 
a  team  ahead  of  him  would  always  excite  him  to  des- 
perate effort.  No  one  could  help  loving  a  little  beast  like 
that,  still  retaining  many  of  his  funny  puppy  ways, 
muzzling  against  one's  shoulder  and  nibbling  gently  at 
one's  clothes  or  one's  ear,  and  so  jealous  of  his  master's 
affection  that  he  was  always  in  danger  of  starting  a  fight 
if  another  dog  were  caressed  in  his  presence.  He  had 
been  thoroughly  spoiled  before  we  started,  and  had 
howled  his  head  off  the  first  few  nights  on  the  chain  until 
the  whip  turned  howls  of  protest  into  howls  of  pain,  and 
then  into  silence.  A  hard-headed,  obstinate,  greedy  pig, 
and  no  parlour  pet  by  any  means,  but  an  engaging  little 
chap  all  the  same,  with  every  promise  of  becoming  a 
valuable  dog. 

The  dean  of  my  dogs  was  gentle  and  kindly  old  Argo, 
a  large,  handsome,  upstanding  animal,  not  of  the  mala- 
mute  breed,  now  in  his  sixth  year  of  my  service  and  in 
the  hale  vigour  of  eight  or  nine  well-fed,  well-cared  for, 
years  of  age,  the  best  and  most  unfailingly  reliable  of 
the  whole  bunch,  who  never  wasted  his  energies  in 
frenzied  spurts  and  premature  efforts  but  could  be  de- 
pended upon  for  steady,  even  traction  all  day  long.  In 
all  his  life  he  had  never  had  a  whip  laid  on  his  back  to 
make  him  pull.  Walter  and  I  had  decided  that  if  he 
made  the  circuit  of  the  coast  and  came  back  to  Fort 


POINT  HOPE  151 

Yukon  with  us  he  should  work  no  more — and  he  is  today 
the  watch-dog  and  guardian  of  the  hospital,  and  play- 
mate and  sled-dog  of  the  convalescent  children,  wearing 
an  engraved  collar  setting  forth  his  honourable  record, 
and  provided  with  an  ornamental  and  exclusive  kennel 
into  which  he  has  never  so  much  as  condescended  to  enter. 
He  is  the  last  of  the  dogs  that  we  used  in  the  ascent  of 
Denali,  hauling  our  stuff  not  only  to  the  mountain  but 
to  the  head  of  the  Muldrow  glacier  more  than  halfway 
up,  and  Walter  insisted  that  his  altitude  record  of  11,500 
feet  should  be  added  to  his  distance  record  of  10,000 
miles  when  the  inscription  was  written.  There  are  dogs 
in  Alaska  who  have  gone  further,  but  few,  I  think,  in 
America,  who  have  gone  higher,  and  almost  certainly 
not  one  who  has  drawn  a  sled  higher,  for  I  do  not  think 
there  is  another  mountain  on  the  continent  on  which  a 
sled  could  be  taken  so  high.  One  of  his  valuable  quali- 
ties was  his  amiability;  we  always  hitched  him  beside  the 
most  quarrelsome  dog  of  the  team.  I  have  often  seen 
him  merely  stretch  his  head  away  from  a  snapping, 
snarling  companion,  not  to  be  provoked  into  a  fight  if 
it  were  avoidable,  his  size  and  strength  such  that  almost 
any  dog  would  think  twice  before  seriously  attacking 
him;  ''too  proud  to  fight,"  one  might  almost  say. 

How  garrulous  a  man  may  become  on  the  subject  of 
his  dogs!  especially  if  he  have  a  turn  for  garrulity;  here 
are  half  a  dozen  waiting  to  be  picked  from,  almost  as 
many  pages  back.  I  left  it  to  Walter,  as  of  course  he 
knew  I  would  do ;  he  had  gathered  them,  I  think,  mainly 
that  I  might  see  how  little  choice  there  was.  There  was 
not  a  pure  malamute  among  them,  and  only  one — and  he 
little  more  than  a  pup — that  had  the  prick  ears  and  the 
plume  tail  of  the  breed,  his  black  and  white  colouring, 
however,  indicating  a  mixture  of  other  strains.  The 
other  three  that  we  chose  had  *'flop"  ears,  two  good- 
sized  white  brothers  and  a  scrubby  tawny  chap,  from  all 
of  whom  we  got  good  work,  but  they  were  no  credit  to 
the  team. 


152  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

We  now  had  thirteen  dogs,  seven  for  the  new  sled  that 
carried  the  greater  load,  and  six  for  the  second  sled. 
"We  planned  to  leave  with  the  mail  and  to  follow  it  all 
the  way  to  Point  Barrow,  and  Mr.  Thomas  decided  at 
last  not  to  go  with  us,  partly  because  of  scarcity  of  dog- 
feed  and  the  likelihood  that  we  should  overcrowd  all 
stopping  places,  and  partly  because  he  thought  it  best  to 
continue  the  school  without  any  intermission  for  another 
month,  by  which  time,  as  he  found,  the  people  would 
begin  to  scattef7\ 


IV 
POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BAREOW 


IV 

POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW 

Though  we  had  lingered  so  long  at  Point  Hope  yet  we 
left  two  days  earlier  than  I  had  expected  or  desired. 
The  mail  arriving  on  Saturday  morning  everyone  had 
supposed  would  lie  here  over  Sunday,  but  the  wind  was 
fair  and  the  mail-man  was  for  pushing  on  and  would 
not  be  persuaded,  so  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
assemble  our  stuff  (this  long  time  ready)  and  make  the 
best  of  a  hurried  departure.  I  was  annoyed  to  go  with- 
out a  chance  to  take  my  leave  of  the  people,  and  disposed 
to  resent  such  unceremonious  haste  in  the  leisurely 
Arctic,  but  if  we  were  to  follow  the  mail  we  must 
start. 

So  on  the  afternoon  of  Saturday,  9th  February,  we 
left  Point  Hope,  going  east  along  the  sandspi^  and  over 
the  lagoons  towards  the  mouth  of  the  Kukpuk  river,  that 
debouches  into  Marryat  Cove  *  where  the  sandspit  joins 
the  mainland.  Mr.  Thomas  accompanied  us  to  spend  the 
night  with  us  at  the  cabin  at  this  place  and  return  early 
in  the  morning  for  his  Sunday  duties.  Marryat  Cove 
(a  name  not  in  local  use)  was  so  named  by  Beechey  for 
the  famous  sailor-novelist  who  delighted  the  youth  of 
most  men  now  middle-aged  and  who  happened  to  be  a 
kinsman  of  one  of  his  officers.  The  mail-man  had  gone 
on  five  miles  further  to  Ah-ka-lii-ruk,  and  we  intended  by 
a  very  early  start  next  morning  to  reach  him  before  he 
left. 

Our  adieus  to  Mr.  Thomas  we  therefore  made  at  five 
o'clock  on  Sunday  morning.  We  were  both  greatly 
indebted  to  him  for  cordial  hospitality  during  a  happy 
sojourn  of  six  or  seven  weeks,  and  were  much  disap- 

*  "  Cove  "  in  Beechey's  narrative,  "  inlet"  on  his  chart;  another  instance 
of  the  discrepancies  between  the  two. 

155 


156  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

pointed  that  we  were  not  to  have  his  gentle,  cheery  com- 
panionship halfway  to  Point  Barrow  as  originally 
planned.  I  was  particularly  grateful  for  his  work  with 
Walter,  rarely  intermitted  during  our  whole  stay,  by 
means  of  which  no  little  progress  had  been  made,  and 
I  was  sorry  for  the  lonely  life  to  which  he  was  returning 
at  the  mission  house,  now  likely  to  be  the  more  keenly 
felt  for  the  visitors  he  had  so  long  entertained.  It  is  not 
wholesome  that  any  man  should  be  so  situated  in  the 
Arctic  regions,  and  it  is  satisfactory  to  know  that  his 
sister,  a  trained  teacher,  is  now  sharing  his  life  and  his 
labours.  My  heart  warms  to  the  thought  of  their  un- 
seljSsh  devotion;  the  glamour  of  the  Arctic  adventure  is 
soon  gone  and  there  remains  the  daily  grind  of  manifold 
duties  and  responsibilities  under  hard  and  sordid  condi- 
tions, more  keenly  felt,  yet  I  think  more  resolutely  en- 
dured, by  the  gently  than  the  rudely  bred. 

As  we  approached  the  igloo  at  Ah-ka-lii-rak  between  six 
and  seven,  striking  right  across  the  inlet  or  cove  to  it, 
we  saw  the  first  smoke  arising  from  the  kindling  fire 
inside  and  knew  that  we  had  anticipated  the  departure  of 
the  mail,  but  the  habitation  was  so  wretchedly  crowded 
that  we  preferred  to  wait  outside,  cold  though  it  was. 
We  learned  that  the  mail  would  not  double  Cape  Lis- 
burne,  which  now  lay  directly  ahead,  owing  to  the  many 
miles  of  very  rough  ice  around  it,  but  would  cut  off  the 
cape  by  ascending  the  Ah-ka-lii-ruk  river  to  its  head, 
crossing  a  divide,  and  descending  the  I-yag-ga-tak  river 
to  its  mouth  beyond  the  cape;  mere  mountain  torrents 
both  of  them  were,  flowing  but  a  very  few  months  in  the 
year,  yet  they  had  washed  out  deeply-incised  valleys  in 
their  time. 

I  was  sorry  for  this,  for  I  had  hoped  to  see  at  close 
hand  the  mighty  cliffs  of  the  cape,  far  loftier  and  grander 
than  those  of  Cape  Thomson;  indeed  those  who  are 
familiar  with  these  parts  describe  Cape  Lisburne  as 
much  the  most  imposing  promontory  of  the  whole  Arctic 
coast — and  perhaps  by  so  much  the  more  dangerous  from 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  157 

the  fierce  winds  that  sweep  down  its  ravines.  This  is  one 
of  Capt.  Cook's  capes,  named  in  1778,  just  140  years 
before.  I  have  exhausted  the  meagre  resources  of  ref- 
erence at  my  command  and,  since  this  was  written, 
the  resources  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society's  library, 
without  discovering  for  whom  this  cape  was  named,  and 
should  be  greatly  obliged  to  anyone  who  could  throw 
light  upon  it,  if  indeed  any  explanation  be  now  possible. 
There  was  no  one  of  the  name  under  Cook's  command, 
no  one  of  the  name  amongst  his  friends  or  patrons :  there 
are  several  places  of  the  same  name  in  the  British  isleS 
and  it  may  be  named  for  one  of  them.  Cook  merely 
mentions  the  name.  The  circumstance  that  he  was  ten 
leagues  off  when  he  named  it  shows  how  bold  and 
prominent  it  is.  It  was  off  this  cape  that  Mikkelsen  came 
near  losing  his  life  upon  his  return  from  the  north  coast, 
in  1908.  He  says,  ''Alongside  of  us  the  mountain  rose 
perpendicularly  almost  to  700  feet.  We  could  hear  the 
thundering  of  the  wind  as  it  came  roaring  over  the  top, 
loosening  large  stones  and  hurling  them  out  over  the  ice. 
Then  we  were  caught  in  a  whirlwind.  I,  who  was  ahead 
of  the  team,  was  blown  over  and  slid  along  the  ice  for 
several  hundred  feet  until  I  was  brought  to  a  standstill 
by  a  piece  of  ice  not  ten  feet  from  an  open  lane  (of 
water).  The  sledge  had  been  lifted  and  hurled  against 
a  piece  of  ice,  a  runner  was  broken  in  two;  again  and 
again  the  sledge  was  lifted  up,  blown  along,  and  hurled 
against  ice  blocks  until  nothing  but  kindling  wood  was 
left.  Our  gear  was  scattered  all  over  the  ice  but  we  had 
nowhere  to  stow  it  so  we  cut  the  harness  of  the  dogs. 
I  shouldered  my  box  with  my  papers  and  journals,  crawl- 
ing along  on  hands  and  knees,  with  water  close  on  one 
side  and  steep  mountains  on  the  other  from  which  stones 
as  large  as  a  man  were  hurled  down  as  if  by  invisible 
hands."*     Bruised  and  frozen  he  and  his  companions 

•  Conquering  the  Arctic  Ice,  pp.  369-70.  This  is  about  the  moat  moving 
incident  of  a  narrative  that  has  not  very  much  to  match  its  promising 
title. 


158  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

made  their  way  back,  half  crawling,  half  walking,  to  the 
habitation  from  which  they  had  been  driven,  despite 
warning  of  the  danger,  by  a  total  absence  of  food. 

So  I  could  not  question  the  wisdom  of  circumventing 
this  ferocious  cape,  and  we  fell  in  line  behind  the  mail 
teams  and  began  the  ascent  of  the  valley,  hoping  to  go 
right  over  and  reach  lyaggatak  that  night. 

The  ice  around  Cape  Lisbume  had  need  be  rough  to 
make  worse  going  than  we  had  up  the  Ahkaliiruk.  It 
was  a  succession  of  deep  snowdrifts  and  bare  sand  and 
gravel,  with  a  steady  ascent  all  told  of  at  least  500  feet, 
and  I  daresay  much  more.  My  3-circle  aneroid  that  had 
travelled  uninjured  in  the  hindsack  of  my  sled  for  ten 
winters  had  at  last  suffered  a  severe  fall  that  had  ren- 
dered it  useless.  All  day  there  was  never  any  good  sur- 
face at  all,  and  we  were  very  heavily  laden.  The  mail 
had  two  sleds  and  three  men;  the  two  who  had  come 
down  from  Point  Barrow  having  engaged  a  third  at 
Point  Hope  on  their  return.  But  their  sleds  were  not 
so  heavy  as  ours,  for  they  had  dog-feed  ''cached"  all 
along  the  way,  while  we  were  hauling  ours.  Certainly 
had  I  known  what  lay  before  us  I  would  have  sent  one 
load  over  the  mountains  to  lyaggatak  before  we  started 
out,  and  had  Mr.  Thomas  himself  been  more  familiar 
with  the  coast  he  would,  I  am  sure,  have  advised  my 
ignorance  to  that  effect.  The  dogs,  too,  were  soft  from 
a  week's  rest,  and  here  was  the  most  laborious  day  of 
the  whole  coast  journey  upon  us  at  the  very  start. 
Walter  had  seven  dogs  with  about  400  pounds  and  I  had 
six  dogs  with  about  300  pounds;  not  too  much  for  level 
going  but  distinctly  overweight  for  mountain  climbing 
over  sand  and  gravel  and  through  snowdrifts. 

A  sharp  gusty  wind  against  us,  with  the  thermometer 
at  — 30  makes  uncomfortable  travelling,  and  I  think 
almost  every  time  Walter  turned  around  he  told  me  that 
my  nose  was  frozen,  and  I  was  often  able  to  reply  ''So 
is  yours!"  Indeed  henceforth  all  along  the  coast  we 
grew  so  accustomed  to  the  freezing  of  our  noses  that  we 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  159 

ceased  to  pay  much  heed  to  it,  and  I  grew  unable  to 
tell,  by  the  sensation,  if  mine  were  frozen  or  not.  The 
freezing  was,  of  course,  superficial — they  blistered  and 
peeled  and  scabbed  until  we  came  to  regard  a  miserably 
sore  nose  as  an  unavoidable  accompaniment  of  Arctic 
travel.  A  scarf  would  have  saved  some  of  the  nose 
freezing,  though  not  all,  but  a  scarf  is  very  much  in  the 
way  if  one  be  walking,  and  added  to  the  heavy  furs  about 
the  head  and  neck  is  sometimes  stifling. 

We  had  been  gone  two  hours  from  the  coast  when  a 
sled  from  Point  Hope  overtook  us  to  collect  a  bill  of 
three  dollars  for  a  seal.  I  had  paid  for  it  by  an  order 
on  the  local  trader,  as  we  paid  all  such  bills,  but  the 
order  had  been  laid  aside  and  not  presented  and  I  had 
squared  up  with  the  trader  without  including  it,  check- 
ing over  his  account  with  the  vouchers  in  his  hand.  I 
had  the  change  in  my  pocket  and  redeemed  the  order 
and  the  sled  turned  and  departed,  but  I  was  struck  with 
the  man's  willingness  to  make  a  journey  to  collect  three 
dollars  that  he  could  not  have  been  hired  to  make  for 
twice  that  sum.  Losing  three  dollars,  it  would  seem,  is 
a  more  serious  matter  to  the  Eskimo  mind  than  making 
three. 

As  it  grew  towards  dusk,  and  the  mail-sleds  out  of 
sight,  Walter  transferred  100  pounds  of  seal-meat  to  my 
sled,  lashing  it  on  top  of  the  load,  but  this  addition  made 
it  top-heavy  and  I  was  continually  upsetting  on  the 
uneven  ground  and  unable  to  right  the  sled  by  myself. 
So  presently  another  expedient  was  adopted;  the  lesser 
sled  was  trailed  behind  the  greater  and  all  the  dogs  put 
in  one  team.  Still  our  progress  was  very  slow,  and  when 
it  grew  dark  and  we  were  not  yet  at  the  end  of  our 
ascent,  we  began  to  realize  that  lyaggatak  would  not  see 
us  that  night.  It  was  very  disappointing  to  find  that  we 
could  not  keep  up  with  the  mail,  and  the  prospect  of  a 
camp  up  here  in  the  naked  mountains  and  the  bitter  wind 
was  cheerless  enough.  We  pushed  on  long  after  dark, 
dogs  and  men  utterly  weary,  and  when  we  judged  from 


160  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

the  level  ground  that  we  were  come  to  the  summit,  we 
made  a  camp. 

We  had  no  tent  and  did  the  best  we  could  in  the  dark 
with  our  two  sleds  and  blocks  of  snow  and  the  two  sled- 
covers,  to  make  a  shelter,  but  the  wind  whistled  through 
it  and  it  was  miserable  enough.  Twice  we  got  the 
primus  stove  lighted  with  great  trouble  and  twice  it  was 
blown  out ;  there  was  no  possibility  of  cooking.  For  the 
first  and  only  time  in  all  my  travelling  the  dogs  lay  in 
their  harness  all  night,  and  when  we  had  thrown  them 
a  fish  apiece  we  crept  into  our  sleeping  bags  just  as  we 
stood,  with  a  cake  of  chocolate  apiece  and  went  hungry 
and  wretched  to  bed.  On  such  an  occasion  the  invincible 
good  humour  of  Walter  was  a  great  resource.  He  made 
light  of  our  plight  and  said  that  for  his  part  he  was  glad 
the  initiation  into  the  delights  of  Arctic  coast  travel  had 
come  so  soon.  "Now  we  know  what  to  expect,"  he  said, 
and  added  later,  "though  I  should  not  be  surprised  if 
this  is  the  worst  night  we  shall  have  on  the  whole  trip." 
But  there  was  not  much  conversation;  we  had  to  shout 
to  be  heard  above  the  whistling  of  the  wind.  Had  we 
not  been  so  anxious  to  keep  up  with  the  mail  we  should 
have  stopped  long  before  when  there  was  light  to  choose 
a  camping  place  where  good  hard  snow  for  blocks  was 
to  be  found,  but  we  were  bent  on  reaching  the  coast  again 
that  night  and  knew  not  how  arduous  a  journey  it  was. 
Walter  was  right,  as  it  turned  out  it  was  the  most  miser- 
able night  of  the  whole  journey;  we  never  went  to  bed 
supperless  again,  nor  were  again  so  entirely  uncom- 
fortably lodged  as  in  our  camp  high  up  in  the  mountains 
behind  Cape  Lisburne. 

My  thoughts  during  a  sleepless  night  were  largely  con- 
cerned with  Point  Hope  and  its  native  people.  I  re- 
viewed the  history  of  the  place  as  I  had  gathered  it,  and, 
the  change  in  the  temper  and  disposition  of  the  people 
that  had  been  brought  about;  a  change  from  a  drunken, 
disorderly  and  violent  folk  of  ill  repute  all  along  the 
coast  to  a  decent,  well-behaved,  quiet,  industrious  com- 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  161 

munity.  I  compared  it  with  a  similar  change  that  had 
come  about  at  Fort  Yukon,  where  the  native  community 
perhaps  of  the  worst  repute  on  the  Yukon  had  become 
one  of  the  best  villages  on  the  river.  It  was  worth  while ; 
it  was  most  certainly  worth  while.  Much  remained  to  be 
done,  but  I  think  the  place  will  compare  favourably  in  con- 
duct with  the  average  white  settlement  of  the  size — except 
in  one  particular,  the  chastity  of  its  women.  There  again 
it  was  borne  in  on  me  that  what  is  called  the  double  stand- 
ard of  morals  really  constitutes  the  only  advance  of 
civilized.  Christianized  people.  The  men  of  Point  Hope 
— indeed  Eskimo  and  Indian  men  in  general — are  not 
more  incontinent  than  the  average  white  man,  I  think. 
The  trouble  is  that  adultery  and  fornication  are  re- 
garded as  just  as  venial  in  a  woman  as  in  a  man,  and 
until  the  standard  of  female  virtue  is  raised  above  that 
of  the  man  I  see  little  prospect  of  further  advancement 
in  self-respect  and  self-control.  I  am  not  implying  that 
these  sins  are  venial  in  anyone ;  but  I  would  contend  that 
it  is  a  blessed  thing  that  we  have  come  to  regard  them  as 
more  flagitious  in  woman  than  in  man.  It  is  surely  a 
step  forward  to  secure  the  chastity  of  one  sex  and  gives 
vantage  ground  to  work  for  the  chastity  of  the  other, 
and  often  when  I  hear  the  '^ double  standard"  inveighed 
against  I  am  conscious  that  it  is  not  a  more  rigid  code 
for  men  but  a  looser  one  for  women  that  is  desired.  Much 
of  the  revolutionary  writing  of  today  is  saturated  with 
that  evil  desire.  There  is  no  ''double  standard"  amongst 
the  Eskimos,  and  to  destroy  it  amongst  Caucasians  would 
reduce  them  to  the  Eskimo  level  of  morals.  I  can  con- 
ceive no  greater  blow  to  civilization  than  to  break  down 
the  distinction  between  a  chaste  woman  and  a  lewd  one, 
which  certain  writers  of  today  seem  resolute  to  do,  and 
I  hold  him  the  enemy  of  human  society  who  entertains 
such  purpose. 

It  is  an  extremely  difficult  thing  to  raise  the  general 
standard  of  conduct  in  a  matter  that  affects  the  general 
gratification  so  much  as  the  intercourse  between  the 


162  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

sexes.  Yet  it  has  been  greatly  raised  already  amongst 
the  Eskimos.  Mr.  Eeese  at  Kivalina  told  me,  and  I  heard 
the  same  elsewhere,  that  within  the  memory  of  middle- 
aged  men  if  a  girl  came  out  of  an  igloo  at  night  she  was 
the  recognized  prey  of  any  man  who  chose  to  seize  her, 
and  that  no  one  would  interfere.  Today  such  a  thing 
would  be  regarded  as  an  outrage  by  the  Eskimos  them- 
selves. The  interchange  of  wives  is  rare  and  is  no  longer 
openly  tolerated;  polygamy  is  unknown.  The  promis- 
cuity that  attended  certain  festive  occasions  when  the 
lights  were  put  out  is  utterly  a  thing  of  the  past.  I  do 
not  make  these  statements  of  my  own  knowledge  but  as 
a  result  of  diligent  enquiry.  There  is  no  question  that 
there  has  been  great  advance.  And  I  think  the  next  step 
must  be  a  set  effort  to  put  a  stigma  upon  women  unfaith- 
ful to  their  husbands  and  upon  lewd  women  generally.  I 
feel  that  very  strongly  both  as  regards  our  Alaskan  In- 
dians and  Eskimos.  While  not  neglecting  the  male  side, 
I  would  stress  the  gravity  of  the  offence  in  the  female. 
After  all,  as  Dr.  Johnson  with  his  robust  good  sense 
pointed  out,  there  is  a  difference  in  consequences  that 
often  makes  the  infidelity  of  the  wife  enormously  more 
important  than  that  of  the  husband,  though  the  sin  be 
the  same.  Native  women  are  sharing  in  the  added  im- 
portance that  women  the  world  over  have  secured  for' 
themselves  of  late  years;  I  am  anxious  to  make  that 
added  importance  an  added  strength  for  virtuous  living, 
upon  which  I  think  turns  whether  it  will  be  a  blessing  or 
a  curse. 

I  recalled  the  grave  deliberations  of  the  village  council, 
earnestly  attacking  the  problems  of  the  place  as  they 
saw  them;  the  woman  confessing  adultery  whom  they 
brought  in  a  body  to  me  one  day  in  the  absence  of  Mr. 
Thomas,  even  as  of  old  a  similar  poor  creature  was 
brought  to  our  Lord,  but  not  brought  to  be  stoned; 
brought  with  the  request  that  she  be  prayed  with  and 
prayed  for.  My  heart  warmed  as  I  thought  of  the  sim- 
ple piety  of  many  of  the  people,  the  real  strength  and  joy 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  163 

which  they  derived  from  the  ministrations  of  religion, 
grown  the  more  precious  as  they  had  grown  the  more  ac- 
customed. Then  I  thought  of  the  eager  children  in  the 
school,  fighting  their  way  against  a  blizzard  day  after 
day;  always  much  ahead  of  time;  their  docile,  plastic 
minds,  and  the  great  promise  which  they  held,  given 
only  grace  and  wisdom  to  mould  them.  I  ran  over  the 
names  and  characteristics  of  the  ones  that  had  appealed 
most  to  me :  Guy  and  Donald,  Helen  and  Minnie,  Abra- 
ham and  Herbert,  Howard  and  Mark,  Andrew  and  Maud 
(the  reader  will  thank  me  for  omitting  Eskimo  surnames), 
in  whose  welfare  I  shall  always  have  the  keenest  in- 
terest. 

Then  I  made  a  house-to-house  visitation  and  descended 
and  crept  until  I  had  entered  the  living  chamber  of  each 
and  could  stand  erect  again,  and  saw  the  groups  squat- 
ting around  a  meal  of  seal-meat  or  frozen  fish  on  the 
floor,  nude  to  the  waist,  men  and  women  alike,  in  the 
animal  warmth  of  their  narrow  quarters  though  an  arc- 
tic gale  raged  outside ;  the  women  furtively  pulling  their 
garments  about  their  shoulders  at  my  unexpected  en- 
trance— at  which  I  was  sorry,  for  I  thought  no  harm  of 
their  comfortable  and  innocent  deshabille,  nor  am  of 
those  who  see  necessary  evil  in  bare  skin.  It  is  surely  a 
highly  sophisticated  conventionality  that  can  compla- 
cently regard  bare  shoulders  in  a  New  York  drawing 
room  (grown  decidedly  barer  since  I  can  remember)  and 
be  shocked  at  them  in  an  Eskimo  igloo. 

Another  habitation  would  be  full  of  industrious  work- 
ers, whittling  wooden  implements  with  their  most  in- 
genious knives,  cutting  and  sewing  skins,  chewing  the 
soles  of  waterboots  to  ensure  that  intimate  union  with 
the  uppers  that  shall  exclude  moisture,  beating  out  and 
twisting  the  fibres  of  reindeer  sinew  into  admirable 
strong  thread  that  never  gives  way :  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren alike  busy,  alike  cheerful,  alike  smiling  a  friendly 
welcome  and  moving  to  make  a  place  for  the  visitor,  who 
rejoiced  that  he  was  not  regarded  as  an  intruder. 


164  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

In  such,  reminiscences  and  reflections  the  night  passed 
and  I  was  surprised  when  a  look  at  the  luminous  dial 
of  my  watch  within  the  closed  sleeping-bag  showed  that 
it  was  already  five  o  'clock.  We  lay  an  hour  or  two  longer, 
for  Walter  was  sleeping,  and  the  weather  conditions  not 
having  changed  there  was  as  little  chance  of  breakfast 
as  there  had  been  of  supper,  beyond  another  cake  of 
chocolate  and  a  piece  of  '^knackerbrod,"  with  which  we 
were  provided  beyond  our  capacity  of  unlubricated  de- 
glutition. It  was  8.30  when  we  had  dug  our  gear  out  of 
the  drifted  snow  and  were  lashed  up  once  more,  for  we 
would  not  attempt  the  descent  that  lay  before  us  until 
daylight  was  at  least  begun. 

Three  or  four  miles  further  on  we  were  deeply  grati- 
fied to  find  that  the  mail  had  camped  also,  for  our  failure 
to  keep  up  with  it  had  been  the  most  disconcerting  fea- 
ture of  last  night's  bivouac.  The  route  was  steep  and 
dangerous  and  we  were  glad  that  we  had  not  attempted 
to  push  further  in  the  dark,  wide  detours  being  necessary 
to  avoid  *'jump-offs"  from  one  bench  to  another.  Going 
down  is  quick  work,  however,  and  the  lyaggatak  was  evi- 
dently of  less  length  and  greater  grade  than  the  Ahka- 
liiruk.  By  half-past  twelve  a  turn  of  the  valley  gave  us 
the  distant  coast  at  its  mouth,  and  there,  spread  out  on 
the  flat,  was  the  Point  Hope  reindeer  herd,  moving  to- 
wards the  native  huts  near  the  beach.  It  was  pretty  to 
watch  the  animals  dotted  about  the  snow,  slowly  gathered 
together  by  the  herders,  but  it  was  not  pretty  when  we 
came  dowu  to  them  half  an  hour  later  to  see  the  throat 
of  one  of  them  cut  just  as  we  passed  by;  the  remainder  of 
the  herd,  as  utterly  indifferent  as  were  the  Frenchwomen 
of  the  Terror  who  knitted  around  the  guillotine.  The 
meat  had  been  brought  by  the  mail-men. 

We  had  certainly  hoped  that  we  might  spend  the  re- 
mainder of  the  day  and  the  night  at  lyaggatak,  but  the 
mail  decided  otherwise,  and  after  a  good  meal  and  a  rest 
of  two  hours  we  pushed  on  for  another  twenty  miles. 
But  the  going  along  the  coast  was  good  save  for  one 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  165 

heavy  pressure  ridge  that  we  had  to  cross  in  the  dark. 
One  of  the  mail  men  was  ahead  of  his  teams  with  a  lan- 
tern, picking  out  a  way  through  the  rough  ice,  and  we 
were  able  to  keep  near  enough  to  follow  his  twinkling 
light  also. 
^  As  we  reached  the  Corwin  coal  mine  a  new  misfortune 
^befell  us.  We  had  left  the  beach  and  were  actually 
climbing  the  little  bank  to  the  door  of  the  house  when 
Walter  noticed  that  one  of  his  dogs,  which,  when  we 
turned  up  from  the  ice  had  been  pulling  with  the  rest, 
was  now  dragged  along,  limp  and  passive,  by  them,  and 
stopping  a  moment  later,  he  was  found  to  be  stone  dead. 
There  was  no  wound,  the  body  was  in  good  condition, 
nothing  whatever  had  happened  to  account  for  it.  It 
was  as  mysterious  a  dog  death  as  I  ever  knew,  and  the 
only  one  of  the  kind  that  ever  happened  in  any  team  of 
mine.  One  naturally  supposes  that  the  dog  must  have 
died  from  heart  disease,  but  there  had  been  no  evidence 
of  any  disease  whatever  and  he  had  been  willingly  work- 
ing and  heartily  eating  ever  since  we  left  Fort  Yukon. 
''Skookum"  was  not  more  than  four  years  old,  I  think, 
a  fairly  large  dog  with  a  good  thick  coat,  of  a  mixed 
breed.  Had  there  been  chance  to  supply  his  place  with 
a  good  malamute  I  would  not  have  minded  so  much,  but 
the  only  dog  procurable  at  this  little  settlement  was  an 
un-handsome,  red-yellow  mongrel  chap  in  poor  condition. 
Since  with  our  heavy  loads  and  our  recent  experience 
we  felt  that  we  must  not  diminish  our  dog  power,  I 
bought  him  for  $20 — and  discovered  when  it  grew  day- 
light next  day  that  he  had  a  bad  wound  on  the  top  of  his 
head  hidden  by  the  hair.  However,  he  throve  and 
worked,  his  head  healed,  and  looks  aside  he  was  a  useful 
addition  to  the  team,  by  the  name  of  ' '  Coal  Mine, ' '  since 
neither  Walter  nor  I  could  remember  the  Eskimo  name 
his  vendor  had  delivered  with  him.  \ 

Narrow  veins  of  coal  in  sandstone,  with  ''bits  of  petri- 
fied wood  and  rushes,"  were  discovered  by  Beechey  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Cape  Beaufort,  but  when  he  closed 


166  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

with  the  land  with  the  intention  of  replenishing  his  fuel 
supply,  a  veering  of  the  wind  made  it  a  lee  shore  and  he 
had  to  stand  off.  The  Corwin  mine  is  so  named  because 
it  was  ''definitely  located  and  used  by  Capt.  Hooper  of 
the  U.  S.  revenue  cutter  Corwin  in  July,  1890."*  It 
had  often  been  resorted  to  by  whalers,  however,  between 
these  two  visits. 

The  coal  is  easily  mined  from  the  face  of  a  bluff,  a 
good  clean  coal  that  looks  like  semi-anthracite  and  burns 
readily,  and  would  be  of  the  very  greatest  value  if  it 
were  otherwise  situated.  But  the  cause  which  prevented 
€apt.  Beechey's  coaling  may  arise  at  any  time  during 
the  brief  open  season,  and  there  is  no  place  along  the 
coast  nearer  than  Marryat  Inlet  (with  the  storm-centre 
of  Cape  Lisburne  to  pass  on  the  way)  where  any  sort  of 
shelter  for  a  vessel  may  be  found.  In  some  seasons  the 
Point  Hope  natives  and  the  Point  Hope  mission  procure 
a  supply  of  coal  here,  filling  sacks  at  the  mine  and  carry- 
ing them  down  to  waiting  oomiaks  or  whale  boats,  and 
in  others  it  is  never  safe  to  approach  the  mine  at  all. 

This  whole  coast  is  an  exceedingly  dangerous  one,  be- 
set by  fog  when  it  is  calm  and  lashed  by  gales  almost 
whenever  it  is  clear,  the  lurking  ice-pack  never  very  far 
away,  and  its  tale  of  wrecks  is  terrible  in  proportion  to 
its  number  of  vessels.  So  this  coal  supply  can  never  be 
depended  upon,  and  that  means,  so  far  as  the  mission  is 
concerned,  that  other  supply  must  always  be  procured. 
An  attempt  was  made  some  years  ago  to  facilitate  the 
getting  of  this  coal  by  providing  the  mission  with  a  gas- 
oline boat  and  a  barge,  but  in  her  first  season  the  Nigalik 
was  blown  from  her  anchorage  in  a  sudden  storm,  car- 
ried across  to  the  coast  of  Siberia  and  cast  away  there. 
For  my  part  I  had  rather  depend  on  driftwood  and  seal- 
oil  fuel  for  the  rest  of  my  natural  life  than  attempt  to 
provide  myself  with  a  "sea-coal  fire"  at  such  hazard, 
and  I  cannot  sufficiently  admire  the  courage  and  confi- 

*  Geographic  Dictionary  of  Alaska. 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  167 

dence  of  a  clergyman  who  will  launch  craft  upon  the  Arc- 
tic Ocean  on  such  errand. 

So  the  coal  is  of  very  little  use,  save  to  one  or  two 
Eskimo  families  connected  with  the  reindeer  herd,  who 
winter  at  the  place  and  trap  a  few  foxes.  It  is  not  situ- 
ated for  sealing  or  whaling  or  any  other  marine  purpose. 
As  one  of  the  men  said  to  me,  ''Point  Hope,  plenty  eat, 
not  much  warm;  Coal  Mine,  plenty  warm,  not  much  eat," 
and  so  it  goes  on  this  part  of  the  Arctic  coast.  The  mine 
was  located  by  an  enterprising  white  man  with  an  eye  to 
the  future,  and  a  patent  secured,  long  ago,  before  the 
Alaska  coal  lands  were  withdrawn  from  entry  (to  which, 
after  ten  years  of  conservation  and  uselessness,  they  are 
just  now  reopened  as  I  write),  but  he  has  never  reaped 
any  benefit  from  his  enterprise,  nor  does  one  see  much 
chance  that  he  ever  will. 

We  were  certainly  glad  of  the  coal,  that  night  of  the 
11th  February,  of  the  spacious  cabin  that  the  abundance 
of  fuel  adequately  warmed,  of  the  cook  stove  with  ample 
space  for  cooking,  as  well  as  the  heater,  of  the  coinfort- 
able  bunks  which  gave  us  a  good  night's  sleep — the  first 
that  I  had  had  since  we  left  the  mission.  The  cabin  was 
obviously  of  white  man's  building,  and  doubtless  repre- 
sented a  part  of  the  unproductive  investment  of  the  mine 
owner. 

Our  comfortable  quarters  and  our  want  of  sleep  made 
us  all  lie  long,  and  it  was  10.30  ere  we  were  started  again ; 
but  the  run  was  not  more  than  eighteen  or  twenty  miles 
over  a  good  surface  and  we  made  it  in  four  hours,  a  keen 
wind  blowing  across  our  course  from  the  cliffs  at  the 
foot  of  which  we  travelled.  "We  passed  the  site  of  the 
''Thetis"  coal  mine,  so  called  because  the  U.  S.  vessel  of 
that  name  once  coaled  there,  and  we  passed  Cape  Sabine, 
so  named  by  Beechey  for  his  old  messmate,  the  astrono- 
mer of  the  Ross  and  Parry  expeditions,  still  remembered 
for  his  researches  into  terrestrial  magnetism  and  his 
long,  careful  experiments  to  determine  the  length  of  the 
second-pendulum,  at  various  places,  but  we  did  not  see 


168  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

either  mine  or  cape,  and  Cape  Sabine,  from  the  shore  at 
any  rate,  is  another  of  the  cape-no-capes  of  the  coast. 

At  Pitmagillik  the  only  inhabited  igloo  was  too  small 
for  the  whole  company,  so  the  three  mail-men  were  re- 
ceived into  it  and  Walter  and  I  had  to  make  the  best  of 
an  empty,  dirty,  cheerless  and  stoveless  igloo,  in  bad  re- 
pair. The  primus  stove  cooked  our  supper,  and,  when- 
ever there  was  time  for  the  necessary  two  or  three  hours* 
preparation,  the  dried  sliced  potatoes,  the  dried  onions, 
and  reindeer  meat,  made  savoury  with  a  package  of  dried 
soup  and  as  many  capsules  of  beef  extract  as  the  salt 
they  contained  permitted  us  to  use,  gave  us  a  thoroughly 
good  meal,  supplemented  by  knackerbrod,  butter  and 
jam,  and  washed  down  with  unlimited  tea.  We  had  to 
wear  our  furs  all  the  time,  and  it  amused  us  to  be  cook- 
ing and  washing  dishes  in  heavy  mittens,  though  later 
we  grew  used  to  that.  After  supper,  while  Walter  was 
feeding  the  dogs,  I  walked  across  to  the  other  igloo,  but 
it  was  literally  too  full  to  enter,  and  while  the  owners 
were  pleased  to  see  me,  the  head  mail-man  evidently  was 
not,  being  perhaps  afraid  I  might  seek  to  wedge  myself 
in  for  the  night,  than  which  nothing  was  further  from 
my  thoughts;  so  I  contented  myself  with  greeting  the 
residents  from  the  inner  threshold,  and  withdrew. 

The  long  evening  gave  us  plenty  of  time  for  study, 
despite  the  cold.  We  lay  half  in  and  half  out  of  our 
sleeping-bags,  and  Walter  had  to  take  off  his  fur  mitt 
every  time  he  turned  a  page.  We  were  now  reading  The 
Merchant  of  Venice,  and  we  got  through  several  acts  and 
discussed  them,  this  being  the  second  reading.  But  his 
mind  was  always  much  more  interested  in  concrete  physi- 
cal things  than  in  literature,  and  it  was  hard,  when  the 
reading  was  done,  to  keep  our  conversation  on  the  educa- 
tional lines  that  I  desired. 

Amongst  the  supplies  sent  to  Point  Hope  were  a  num- 
ber of  little  cans  of  "solidified  alcohol,"  and  we  had 
found  it  much  more  convenient  for  starting  the  primus 
stove  than  the  fluid  alcohol  with  which  we  were  also  sup- 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BAEROW  169 

plied.  The  solid  ignites  more  readily  than  the  liquid  at 
low  temperatures  because  it  is  easier  for  the  flame  to 
play  upon  the  projecting  points  of  a  solid  than  upon  the 
flat  surface  of  a  liquid,  and  it  is  also  much  more  con- 
venient for  transportation.  Of  course  it  has  its  draw- 
backs ;  all  improvements  have  drawbacks ;  and  the  draw- 
back of  the  solidified  alcohol  is  the  dirty  residuum  that 
it  leaves  behind  from  the  incombustible  ingredients  ob- 
viously employed  to  bring  about  the  solidification,  which 
must  be  scraped  out  after  each  burning.  Walter  was 
keenly  interested  in  the  new  preparation  and  wanted  to 
know  how  it  was  made.  He  was  always  asking  me  things 
like  that  which  I  was  unable  to  tell  him.  I  knew  that 
solidified  alcohol  was  not  a  new  thing;  like  many  other 
inventions  it  lay  unused  for  a  number  of  years.  When 
first  I  came  to  Alaska  the  men  of  the  Signal  Corps  en- 
gaged in  the  care  of  the  telegraph  lines  in  winter  were 
supplied  with  an  almost  identical  preparation  for  the 
quick  starting  of  fires,  but  when,  a  year  later,  I  endeav- 
oured to  procure  some  for  myself,  I  was  told  that  it  had 
not  been  commercially  successful  and  had  been  with- 
drawn from  the  market.  Ten  years  later  some  ingenious 
adapter  of  other  people's  inventions  bethought  him  of 
domestic  uses  for  it  and  put  it  up  in  ten-cent  cans,  de- 
vising a  folding  stand  and  a  little  pot,  and  now  it  has 
great  vogue  for  heating  shaving  water  and  making  a 
quick  cup  of  tea — but  it  is  useless  in  the  least  wind. 
What  it  was  that  was  added  to  the  alcohol  to  solidify  it 
I  had  not  the  least  notion  of.  Then  he  wanted  to  know 
the  difference  between  alcohol  used  for  fuel  and  alcohol 
that  rendered  liquors  intoxicating,  having  been  much  im- 
pressed some  time  ago  by  the  sudden  death  of  two  wood- 
choppers  at  Tanana,  who,  when  their  whiskey  was  ex- 
hausted, were  drawn  by  their  unsatisfied  craving  to  the 
consumption  of  wood  alcohol.  Why  should  one  alcohol 
make  a  man  only  drunk  and  another  suddenly  kill  himf 
Why  should  the  same  name  be  given  to  such  very  different 
liquids?    That  also  I  could  not  tell  him,  having  no  clear 


170  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

notion  of  the  difference  between  the  ethyl  and  the  methyl 
alcohols  myself.  All  I  could  tell  him  was  that  they  dif- 
fered in  that  obscure  but  "very  fiery  particle"  called  a 
*' hypothetical  radical,"  and  that  the  whole  subject  of 
the  alcohols  was  not  simple  by  any  means  but  very  highly 
complex.  Then  he  wanted  to  know  what  the  name  *' alco- 
hol" really  meant,  and  that  I  could  answer,  but  how  much 
further  does  the  knowledge  that  it  means  literally  "the 
powder"  take  us?  It  is  interesting  because  it  carries 
w^ith  it  the  history  of  the  Moorish  chemists  of  Spain  and 
the  discoveries  of  aqua  fortis  and  aqua  regia,  and  the 
whole  subject  of  the  contribution  to  human  knowledge 
made  by  the  Arabs,  but  it  shows  chiefly  what  a  long  way 
the  word  has  travelled  in  meaning  since  it  was  first  em- 
ployed. But  I  could  not  get  him  off  on  the  subject  of 
alchemy,  fascinating  as  it  is,  and  I  could  not  help  him  on 
the  subject  of  chemistry  because  the  little  chemistry  I 
learned  at  school  is  long  since  utterly  obsolete  and  aban- 
doned ;  and  the  discussion  ended  as  many  a  similar  one 
did,  "My  boy,  when  you  begin  your  study  of  medicine 
you  will  be  crammed  full  of  this  sort  of  stuff  and  nothing 
else.  Now  what  I  am  anxious  for  is  that  your  mind 
should  be  stored  with  literature  and  history  before  the 
time  of  professional  and  technical  study  comes.  Science 
is  constantly  and  necessarily  changing;  what  was  knowl- 
edge yesterday  is  ignorance  today.  But  the  time  will 
never  come  when  Hamlet  and  The  Merchant  of  Venice 
will  be  other  than  masterpieces  of  literature.  The  value 
of  the  great  artistic  efforts  of  the  human  mind  is  that 
they  are  permanent,  so  far  as  human  things  may  be  per- 
manent. I  took  you  to  see  great  pictures  in  New  York, 
and  I  hope  to  take  you  to  see  great  pictures  abroad.  I 
took  you  to  hear  great  music,  because  I  want  your  w^hole 
nature  developed,  because  I  want  you  to  have  a  share  in 
the  general  human  inheritance."  But  he  persisted  (and 
I  was  glad  of  a  new  development  and  eagerness  of  his 
dialectic),  "Isn't  chemistry  a  part  of  that  inheritance 
too,  and  are  you  not  yourself  anxious  to  know  something 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BAREOW  171 

of  it?"  "Yes,  I  should  like  to  know  all  about  chemistry 
and  all  about  every  other  science,  but  when  a  man  comes 
to  my  age,  if  he  have  learned  anything  at  all  he  has 
learned  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  to  learn  everything, 
and  that,  given  a  sort  of  general  foundation  to  build 
upon,  it  is  better  to  try  to  know  a  good  deal  about  a  few 
things  rather  than  a  little  about  them  all.  I  am  content 
to  leave  omniscience  to  God,  with  the  firm  belief  that  all 
through  eternity  I  shall  progress  towards  His  Knowl- 
edge. All  knowledge  is  one,  as  I  am  never  tired  of  tell- 
ing you;  it  has  its  unity  in  the  mind  of  God,  but  it  can 
never  find  its  unity  in  any  human  mind.  The  earth  is 
one,  but  no  man  can  ever  know  the  whole  earth.  You 
and  I  know  a  little  about  the  Arctic  regions  and  by  and  by 
may  know  a  little  more,  but  a  man  may  study  the  Arctic 
regions  all  his  life  and  not  exhaust  them — and  what  about 
the  temperate  zones  and  the  tropics?  I  am  interested 
in  the  chemistry  of  alcohol,  but  (taking  up  my  little  red 
volume)  I  am  more  interested  in  the  history  of  Armenia 
with  which  Gibbon  is  now  dealing.  If  a  man  should  take 
a  portion  of  the  earth  for  his  study  instead  of  a  period 
of  time  (as  Freeman  did  Sicily)  I  think  there  could  be 
few  more  attractive  regions  than  Armenia.  It  was  con- 
cerned in  the  earliest  as  it  is  in  the  latest  of  the  great 
wars.  It  is  the  highway  between  the  historic  east  and 
the  historic  west.  It  was  the  first  Christian  country,  and 
today  the  Turks  are  doing  their  best  to  exterminate  its 
Christian  population.  I  doubt  if  there  is  in  the  whole 
history  of  the  human  race  a  more  terrible  story  than  the 
story  of  what  the  Turks  are  doing  in  Armenia.  Yet  I 
hope  to  see  it  an  independent  Christian  country  again 
when  the  day  of  reckoning  comes."  Presently  Walter 
went  to  sleep  and  I  went — to  Armenia,  for  sleep  I  could 
not.  I  read  till  the  little  acetylene  lamp  was  exhausted 
and  then  I  got  up  and  started  the  primus  stove  and 
melted  some  ice  to  recharge  it,  and  crawling  back  into 
my  sleeping-bag,  read  till  it  was  exhausted  again. 
I  have  not  forgotten  that  I  promised  not  to  trouble  the 


172  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

reader  with  Mr.  Barlow  any  more,  but  there  are  many 
youths  who  have  had  much  greater  advantages  and  op- 
portunities than  Walter,  who  are  more  eager  even  than 
he  was  to  address  themselves  prematurely  to  the  prepa- 
ration for  their  scientific  career.  The  colleges  of  the 
Pacific  coast  states  are  swollen  with  post-graduate  stu- 
dents who  have  never  been  undergraduates  or  who  cer- 
tainly have  never  graduated  from  anything  but  a  high 
school;  with  scientific  and  technical  students  who  know 
nothing  of  literature  and  history — and  from  them  come 
our  physicians  and  lawyers  who  go  so  far  in  depriving 
their  vocations  of  the  right  to  be  called  learned  profes- 
sions. We  have  been  specially  familiar  with  the  class 
in  Alaska,  as  is  perhaps  not  unnatural,  and  I  was  re- 
solved to  have  no  hand  in  adding  to  it.  I  recall  a  phy- 
sician in  Fairbanks  who,  with  Vandyke  beard,  and  gold 
pince-nez — ''like  a  painless  dentist"  as  0.  Henry  says — 
and  a  most  impressive  manner,  talked  about  extracting 
a  ''populace"  from  a  child's  nose,  an  astounding  feat  of 
legerdemain  that  puts  all  the  hat-and-rabbit  tricks  to 
shame.  Of  course  I  knew  he  meant  "polypus,"  but  who 
would  dream  of  entrusting  himself  for  any  ailment  what- 
ever to  a  man  like  that?  From  my  point  of  view  he  was 
a  quack,  but  he  was  furnished  with  diplomas  and  cer- 
tificates and  his  "professional  standing"  was  unex- 
ceptionable. "We  was"  doesn't  trouble  me  in  ordinary 
people,  but  "we  was"  doctors  are  an  offence. 

So  also  I  recall  a  lawyer,  an  assistant  to  a  district 
attorney,  who  swore  out  "John  Doe  and  Richard  Roe'* 
warrants  under  an  old  United  States  statute  against  in- 
oculation, for  the  arrest  of  some  men  who  were  suspected 
of  a  design  to  violate  a  smallpox  quarantine.  I  did  not 
object  to  his  doing  it,  for  at  that  time  there  was  no  other 
statute  under  which  it  could  be  done,  and  if  any  stick  be 
good  enough  to  beat  a  dog  with  any  statute  that  will  even 
temporarily  serve  is  good  enough  to  stop  the  spread  of 
smallpox  with,  but  I  was  astonished  at  his  maintaining 
that  the  statute  actually  covered  the  offence  and  that  any 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BAEROW  173 

action  that  caused  the  spread  of  disease  was  inocula- 
tion. *^Is  there  then  no  dictionary  in  your  office?"  I 
asked.  ' '  Dictionary  1 '  ^  said  he  with  a  fine  scorn ;  *  *  we  've 
got  no  time  in  our  office  to  fool  with  school  books.  We 
leave  the  dictionary  to  the  stenographers."  How  can  a 
man  know  law  if  he  know  nothing  else  ?  And  while  I  sup- 
pose a  man  may  be  a  clever  surgeon  who  knows  nothing 
but  surgery,  I  do  not  believe  that  a  man  can  ever  be  a 
competent  physician  who  knows  nothing  but  medicine. 

At  any  rate  I  was  long  resolved  that  if  Walter  were  to 
be  a  physician,  which  was  my  ambition  for  him  as  well 
as  his  ambition  for  himself,  he  should  not  be  a  little  nar- 
row one — his  mental  life  an  island  detached  from  the 
great  body  of  human  culture,  and  completely  surrounded 
with  tinctures  and  lotions  and  liniments,  even  though  his 
practice  were  devoted,  as  he  designed,  to  the  Yukon 
Indians  from  whom  he  was  sprang,  but  rather  that  it 
should  be  a  peninsula,  jutting  out  as  far  as  he  pleased 
into  such  sea,  but  firmly  fixed  and  broadly  based  upon  the 
mainland  of  general  knowledge. 

During  the  night  the  weather  changed  and  grew  much 
warmer  and  a  furious  gale  from  the  south  arose.  The 
next  morning  we  had  an  illustration  of  the  power  of  the 
wind.  The  sleds  were  left  standing  as  we  had  arrived, 
the  hindsacks  at  the  rear  of  them  facing  a  little  east  of 
our  north  course,  and  my  hindsack,  a  capacious  sack  of 
moose  hide  with  a  richly-beaded  flap  that  fell  the  whole 
length  of  it,  was  secured  by  a  string  tied  tightly  around 
it  as  well  as  by  the  toggles  that  held  the  flap  closed.  Yet 
next  morning  that  hindsack  was  filled  in  every  interstice 
of  its  contents  with  firmly-packed  snow,  driven  before 
the  wind.  There  seems  no  limit  to  the  penetrating  power 
of  that  finely-divided  fiercely-sped  snow.  It  is  more  like 
a  sand-blast  than  anything  else  I  know.  The  sleds  were 
full  of  it — fine  as  flour, — although  the  sled-covers  had 
been  replaced  and  relashed  when  we  had  taken  what  we 
needed  into  the  igloo,  but  I  was  most  astonished  at  the 
inside  of  the  hindsack,  which  was  filled  with  snow  from 


174  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

top  to  bottom  as  though  the  articles  contamed  had  been 
packed  in  snow  as  grapes  are  packed  in  sawdust. 
^"■^Loading  and  lashing  the  sleds,  and  hitching  the  dogs 
in  the  howling  gale  that  continued,  was  very  difficult  and 
disagreeable  work,  but  when  w^e  were  once  started  we 
w^ent  along  at  a  fine  clip,  and  had  we  possessed  any  means 
of  rigging  a  sail  would  not  have  needed  dog-traction  at 
all  that  day.  All  day  long  the  wind  drove  us  before  it 
and  kept  us  covered  with  the  flying  snow,  most  of  the 
time  on  the  beach  but  part  of  it  amongst  rough  sea-ice, 
and  sometimes  sleds  and  dogs  were  blown  broadcast 
across  the  smooth  ice  of  lagoons ;  at  others  the  sled  first 
and  all  the  dogs  dragged  sprawling  behind,  do  what  one 
would  to  keep  ''head-on.")  Vision  was  very  limited;  there 
w^ere  distant  glimpses  oi  hills  on  one  hand  and  the  fa- 
miliar grey  obscurity  of  sea-ice  on  the  other.  On  such  a 
day  one  sees  very  little  indeed.  As  we  approached  the 
last  hill  I  knew  that  we  were  at  Cape  Beaufort,  named  by 
Beechey  for  the  hydrographer  to  the  British  admiralty, 
who  is  the  same  Captain  (afterwards  Admiral  Sir 
Francis)  Beaufort  for  whom  Franklin  named  a  bay,  and 
is  chiefly  remembered  for  his  scale  of  wind  velocities 
known  as  the  ''Beaufort  scale."  I  have  been  interested 
to  see  the  "Beaufort  scale"  quoted  in  recent  gun-firing 
tests  and  also  in  certain  calculations  about  aeroplanes. 
Cape  Beaufort  would  have  been  a  good  place  for  his 
experiments. 

We  all  stayed  together  that  night  in  an  empty,  stove- 
less  igloo  at  a  place  called  Mut-tak-took,  and  the  business 
of  getting  unloaded  and  settled  was  especially  tedious. 
It  is  always  a  task  to  convey  one's  belongings  into 
these  habitations.  First  one  takes  a  sleeping-bag  and, 
pushing  it  before  or  dragging  it  behind,  crawls  through 
the  dark,  narrow  passages,  opening  the  little  cubby-hole 
doors  until  the  inner  chamber  is  reached,  and  there  de- 
posits it.  Then  one  crawls  out  again  and  another  trip 
is  made  for  the  grub  box  or  some  other  piece  of  our  bag- 
gage; then  another  and  another.    It  reminds  me  of  the 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  175 

laborious  methods  of  an  insect,  dragging  some  treasure 
trove  to  its  burrow.  The  longer  and  narrower  the  pas- 
sages the  more  disagreeable  the  task.  The  process  of 
occupying  this  burrow  was  especially  irksome  because 
the  innermost  door  proved  too  small  to  permit  the  pas- 
sage of  the  grub  box,  and  when  it  had  been  dragged  to 
the  end  of  the  labyrinth  it  had  to  be  dragged  out  again 
and  the  articles  needed  removed  from  it.  So  have  I  seen 
an  ant  drag  the  leg  of  a  beetle  halfway  into  its  abode, 
only  to  be  compelled  to  eject  it  again.  Once  established 
within,  however,  in  such  a  gale  as  was  still  blowing,  one 
appreciates  the  entire  seclusion  from  the  wind  which 
these  tortuous,  constricted  entrances  secure,  and  a  jour- 
ney on  the  Arctic  coast  is  necessary  to  make  any  man 
realize  the  blessing  and  comfort  of  mere  shelter. 

The  bill  of  fare  of  our  mail-men  did  not  vary  much. 
They  boiled  seal-meat  and  ate  it  with  the  fingers,  dipping 
each  morsel  in  a  tin  of  seal-oil,  and  their  only  other  food 
consisted  of  a  sort  of  doughnut  fried  in  seal-oil.  They 
cooked  with  a  primus  stove,  the  use  of  which  is  universal 
in  these  parts,  and  they  took  liberties  with  it  and  showed 
a  skill  in  its  manipulation,  born  of  long  familiarity.  The 
instructions  that  come  with  the  stove  expressly  forbid 
the  use  of  gasoline  in  it,  yet  I  have  seen  them  use  it. 
Like  a  good  many  other  inadvisable  things,  it  may  be 
done  if  one  be  careful.  The  chief  danger  in  the  use  of 
gasoline  comes,  I  think,  at  the  moment  of  extinction  of 
the  stove.  The  primus  stove  is  extinguished  by  opening 
a  cock  which  permits  the  escape  of  the  compressed  air. 
Now  air  that  has  been  in  contact  with  coal  oil  is  not  in- 
flammable, but  air  that  has  been  in  contact  with  gasoline 
under  pressure  is  not  only  inflammable  but  explosive, 
and  the  escape  of  this  air  while  the  stove  is  still  alight 
or  glowing  red-hot  will  almost  certainly  be  attended  by 
disaster.  So  when  burning  gasoline  in  it  it  is  necessary 
to  blow  out  the  stove  by  a  mighty  blast  from  the  lungs, 
or  to  smother  it  in  some  way,  and  then  when  it  is  ex- 
tinguished the  air  may  safely  be  released.    But  the  va- 


176  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

pourized  gasoline  that  escapes  from  the  stove,  even  for 
the  moment  between  extinguishing  the  flame  and  releas- 
ing the  air,  is  exceedingly  irritating  to  the  eyes  and 
throat.  I  have  used  primus  stoves  for  a  number  of  years 
and  have  never  had  an  accident  or  seen  an  accident  with 
them ;  employing  coal  oil  for  fuel  they  are  perfectly  safe ; 
and  I  am  convinced  that  the  explosion  of  one  of  these 
stoves  and  the  severe  burning  of  one  of  his  men  which 
Amundsen  describes  in  his  NortJvwest  Passage,  must 
have  been  occasioned  by  the  use  of  gasoline. 

Here  Walter  and  I  had  our  first  taste  of  seal-meat,  the 
Eskimos,  whose  table  was  continually  supplemented  from 
our  grub  box,  offering  us  some  of  it.  We  had  been  sol- 
emnly warned  against  it  by  a  white  resident  of  the  coast 
whom  we  had  met  earlier — one  of  those  of  whom  it  may 
be  said  that  ^'should  the  haughty  stranger"  of  Eliza 
Cook's  song  "seek  to  know.  The  place  of  his  home  and 
birth"  he  would  only  have  to  listen  for  a  moment. 
*'H'I've  h'et  h'owls  and  h'l've  h'et  h 'otters,"  he  said, 
''h'I've  h'et  most  everythink  that's  got  fur  or  feathers, 
but  excuse  me  from  seal-meat!  A  man  ain't  a  w'ite 
man  that'll  h'eat  it."  The  owls  and  the  otters  *'was 
chicken  to  it. "  But  we  did  not  find  it  so  bad.  I  ate  very 
little  of  it,  meat  forming  a  small  part  of  my  diet  when 
any  other  food  is  obtainable,  but  Walter  ate  it  on  several, 
occasions,  if  not  with  relish  at  least  to  the  satisfaction  of 
his  constant  craving  for  flesh.  It  had  a  lingering  taste 
as  though  it  had  been  boiled  in  a  fish  kettle  that  had  not 
been  previously  cleaned.  A  hungry  man  would  soon  be- 
come accustomed  to  its  taste  and  would  not  mind  it,  I 
think,  and  it  is  undoubtedly  strong,  sustaining  food.  In 
the  modern  school  of  Arctic  exploration  ability  to  live 
upon  seal-meat  seems  the  first  requisite. 

Another  convenience  with  which  the  Eskimos  are  well 
supplied  is  the  thermos  bottle,  and  never  was  there  a 
more  beneficent  invention  for  the  Arctic  regions.  I 
think  that  every  travelling  Eskimo  we  met  was  pro- 
vided with  it.    Where  there  is  no  possibility  of  stopping 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  177 

and  building  a  fire  to  cook  with,  these  heat-retaining  bot- 
tles become  indispensable  to  comfortable  travel.  They 
furnish  a  good  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  needs  are 
created  by  the  invention  of  something  which  supplies 
them.  For  untold  generations  men  travelled  these  win- 
ter coasts  without  any  such  means  of  carrying  hot  re- 
freshment ;  now  that  such  a  means  has  been  devised  it  is 
immediately  regarded  as  a  necessity — and  quite  rightly 
so  regarded.  "What  can't  be  cured  must  be  endured," 
but  when  a  cure  has  been  found  endurance  becomes  a 
mere  surplusage  of  hardihood. 

The  situation  of  the  Eskimos  along  the  sea  coast  has 
always  been  favourable  to  the  introduction  of  new  things. 
Of  old  they  had  the  earliest  intercourse  with  the  whites, 
and,  before  any  direct  intercourse,  were  mediately  in 
touch  with  the  white  man's  goods  through  the  Siberian 
tribes.  They  had  iron  tools  and  firearms — and  rum — 
before  these  things  reached  the  Indians  of  the  interior; 
and  while  I  can  see  that  there  was  some  opportunity  for 
Eskimo  development  even  had  these  coasts  remained  un- 
discovered, I  am  convinced  that  the  culture  of  the  In- 
dians of  the  interior  had  become  stationary.  Shut  out 
from  all  access  to  the  sea  by  the  hostile  Eskimos,  there 
is  no  telling  for  how  many  ages  they  had  remained  at 
the  stage  of  development  they  had  reached,  nor  for  how 
many  ages  more  they  would  have  so  continued  had  not 
the  white  man  penetrated  into  their  country. 

Still  another  resource  of  civilization  we  found  com- 
mon amongst  these  folks — the  telescope.  We  had  now 
reached,  and  for  hundreds  of  miles  should  traverse,  a 
perfectly  flat  coast.  The  "last  mountain,"  "A-mahk- 
too-sook,"  rose  beside  us  at  this  encampment,  and  there- 
after the  hills  receded  so  rapidly  that  they  were  soon  out 
of  sight.  We  saw  no  more  elevations  of  the  land  until 
we  had  crossed  Harrison  Bay  on  the  north  coast  six 
weeks  later  and  distant  faint  outlines  of  the  Franklin 
mountains  gladdened  our  eyes.  So  a  telescope  becomes 
a  necessity  also,  to  sweep  the  level  horizon  for  some  sign 


178  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

of  human  habitation,  some  little  landmark  of  driftwood 
or  cut  bank  of  shingle,  some  hint  that  to  a  man  familiar 
with  this  coast  should  suffice  to  indicate  his  whereabouts. 
It  was  common  from  this  time  forward  to  see  a  man 
clamber  to  the  top  of  an  ice  hummock  and  scan  the  dis- 
tance with  his  telescope. 

For  all  these  conveniences  the  Eskimos  are  indebted 
to  the  whalers,  and  for  the  plentifulness  of  them  to  the 
large  moneys  which  they  themselves  made  in  whaling  so 
long  as  the  price  of  whalebone  remained  high.  It  is  in  my 
mind  that  as  they  are  broken  or  lost  they  will  not  be  so 
readily  replaced  now. 

Of  the  three  Eskimos,  the  responsible  mail  carrier, 
Andy,  was  an  interesting  study.  His  Point  Barrow  com- 
panion was  a  stolid,  unintelligent  chap  with  very  little 
English;  his  Point  Hope  recruit  a  lively,  good-natured 
but  none  too  industrious  youth  named  Tom  Goose.  Our 
relations  with  Andy  were  uncertain.  At  times  he  would 
apparently  desire  to  be  helpful  and  even  cordial;  at 
others  he  would  be  as  churlish  as  Nabal — ''such  a  son 
of  Belial  that  a  man  may  not  speak  to  him"  as  the  serv- 
ant described  his  master  with  almost  modem  emphasis 
of  dislike.  His  chief  characteristic  was  his  self-import- 
ance. Not  only  was  he  in  charge  of  the  United  States 
mail,  but  he  was  a  man  of  substance  and  consequence  at 
Point  Barrow;  the  owner  of  a  reindeer  herd,  a  "fellow 
that  hath  had  losses, ' '  even  though  he  could  not  boast  of 
*'two  gowns  and  everything  handsome  about  him,"  and 
an  office-holder  of  some  sort  in  the  mission  church.  I 
think  that  perhaps  he  viewed  me  with  some  suspicion  at 
first  as  an  emissary  of  the  alien  church  at  Point  Hope, 
where  they  tolerated  such  abominations  as  dancing,  much 
in  the  way  that  one  of  John  Knox's  preachers  may  have 
viewed  a  prelatist  of  his  day — I  am  not  sure. 

He  had  learned  my  surname  and  my  title  but  used  the 
former  only,  without  prefix,  which  was  his  habit  with  all 
white  men.  It  did  not  trouble  me  in  the  least,  but  it  an- 
noyed Walter.    But  it  did  annoy  me  to  hear  him  con- 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  179 

tinually  refer  to  the  missionary  physician  at  Point  Bar- 
row as  ''Spence.'*  Our  talk,  of  course,  was  mainly  of 
that  place,  and  everything  connected  with  it  was  of  in- 
terest. With  Dr.  Spence  I  had  had  some  correspondence, 
and  I  had  heard  of  him  in  the  highest  terms  all  along  the 
coast ;  indeed  Andy  sang  his  praises  also.  So  I  took  oc- 
casion to  ask  him  very  gently  whether  when  he  spoke  of 
*' Spence"  he  referred  to  the  doctor  at  Point  Barrow, 
and  when  he  said  that  he  did  I  said,  with  decidedly  more 
severity  of  manner,  ' '  Then  when  you  speak  to  me  of  him 
you  will  say  *  Doctor  Spence,'  "  and  thereafter  whenever 
he  mentioned  the  name  I  insisted  on  the  prefix. 

His  immediate  employer  and  "boss,"  who,  besides 
being  postmaster  and  United  States  commissioner,  was 
reindeer  superintendent  and  schoolmaster  (or  at  least 
the  husband  of  the  schoolmistress),  and  an  ordained  min- 
ister of  religion  of  one  of  the  Protestant  Churches 
(though  not  officially  functioning  in  this  last  capacity  at 
Point  Barrow),  Andy  always  referred  to  as  ''Cram."  1 
did  not  concern  myself  in  his  behalf,  feeling  that  a  man 
with  so  many  rods  of  authority  in  his  hands  should  be 
quite  able  to  look  after  his  own  dignity.  If  ''Cram"  he 
were  content  to  be,  "Cram"  he  might  remain,  so  far  as 
I  was  concerned.  But  it  was  otherwise  with  Dr.  Spence, 
whom  I  knew  of  as  an  elderly  gentleman  of  most  devoted 
and  kindly  character,  and  I  spent  some  time  in  explain- 
ing to  Andy  that  if  he  really  respected  him  he  should  not 
speak  of  him  with  no  more  respect  than  of  a  dog. 

It  is  hard  to  understand  why  our  own  people  of  the 
Western  States,  the  "average  man"  who  looms  so  large 
in  the  talk  of  statesmen  just  now,  should  have  so  totally 
rejected  all  terms  and  customs  of  respect,  unless  it  be 
from  some  preposterous,  perverse  notion  that  to  be  cour- 
teous is  to  be  servile.  The  French  are  supposed  to  be 
fully  as  enamoured  of  equality  as  we  are,  but  no  French- 
man, no  gamin  of  the  Paris  streets,  would  answer  a 
stranger  with  an  abrupt  "Yes"'  or  "  No,"  he  would  as- 
suredly append  the  "Monsieur"  or  "Madame."     The 


180  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

French  equality  seems  an  equality  of  respect;  ours  seems 
an  equality  of  disrespect.  It  sometimes  seems  almost  as 
important  to  make  our  democracy  palatable  and  accept- 
able to  the  world  as  to  make  the  world  safe  for  our  de- 
mocracy. The  western  practice  being  what  it  is,  it  is  not 
surprising,  though  it  is  still  more  striking,  that  the  Es- 
kimos and  Indians  who  have  learned  white  men's  ways 
from  the  only  w^hite  men  they  have  met  should  be  rude 
and  discourteous  of  English  speech.  But  it  is  unfortu- 
nate (and  this  is  what  I  have  been  coming  to)  that  the 
government  schools  should  be  content  to  leave  it  so, 
should  be  content  to  make  no  effort  themselves  to  incul- 
cate politeness.  My  first  criticism  of  these  government 
schools  is  that  the  children  are  well  taught  in  the  com- 
mon school  subjects,  quite  remarkably  well  taught  when 
the  circumstances  are  taken  into  consideration;  my  sec- 
ond is  that  there  is  very  little  attempt  to  teach  politeness 
at  all.  A  teacher  who  invited  and  received  this  com- 
ment replied  with  some  feeling,  ''Last  Christmas  when 
they  received  their  presents,  every  child  said  'Thank 
you.'  "  It  comes  do^vn  to  the  teachers.  Here  was  this 
man  Andy,  with  fairly  good  English,  himself  bred  at  the 
Point  Barrow  school  which  his  children  are  now  attend- 
ing, devoid  of  the  first  rudiments  of  politeness  or  respect 
for  others,  though  he  may  have  an  annual  Christmas 
' '  Thank  you. ' '  He  had  evidently  never  been  taught  the 
first  thing  that  he  should  have  learned. 

Andy's  speech  was  only  a  symptom;  urbanity  has  not 
characterized  our  people  in  the  past,  from  the  highest 
to  the  lowest.  It  is  said  that  when  the  brother  of  the 
King  of  Italy,  the  Duke  of  the  Abruzzi,  who  besides  be- 
ing a  traveller  and  an  explorer  of  world-wide  renown  is 
regarded  as  one  of  the  most  accomplished  gentlemen  of 
Europe,  was  returning  from  his  ascent  of  Mt.  St.  Elias, 
he  paid  a  visit  of  courtesy  to  the  governor  of  Alaska,  and 
that  the  governor  met  him  with  the  question,  "When  you 
climbba  de  mountain,  you  freeza  de  nose,  eh?"  explain- 
ing afterwards  that  all  dagoes  looked  alike  to  him.    I 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  181 

cannot  vouch  for  the  story,  but  I  think  it  not  improb- 
able. We  have  greatly  improved  in  governors  since  that 
day,  and  as  much  urbanity  will  be  found  at  the  executive 
mansion  at  Juneau  nowadays  as  anywhere  in  the  world; 
perhaps  by  and  by  the  improvement  may  trickle  down 
into  the  schoolrooms. 

For  a  long  time  that  night  the  Eskimos  fried  dough- 
nuts in  seal-oil  for  their  next  day's  and  night's  repasts, 
and  my  eyes  smarted  so  with  the  acrid  fumes  that  there 
was  no  reading,  no  study,  but  we  crawled  into  our  sleep- 
ing-bags and  kept  our  heads  as  near  the  ground  as  pos- 
sible. It  was  another  uncomfortable  lodging.  If  there 
were  means  of  making  oneself  reasonably  comfortable  at 
night,  travelling  on  this  coast  would  not  be  excessively 
arduous,  but  these  ' '  cold  lairs ' '  give  one  small  chance  of 
recuperation  from  the  fatigues  of  the  day. 

By  six  the  next  morning,  the  14th  February,  we  were 
packed  up  and  gone.  The  southerly  gale  on  the  wings 
of  which  we  had  advanced  all  day  yesterday  had  blown 
itself  out  and  we  had  crawled  out  of  the  igloo  into  a  per- 
fect calm.  There  was  a  fair  t  'ail  along  the  beach,  and 
the  "last  mountain"  was  soon  behind  us.  Shortly  after 
sunrise  Andy  saw  a  seal  hole  in  the  ice  and  squatted  be- 
side it  with  his  rifle  for  a  full  hour,  while  the  sleds  went 
on  a  mile  or  two  and  there  waited  for  him.  But  the  seal 
had  evidently  made  other  respiratory  arrangements  that 
day,  and  when  we  were  beginning  to  grow  cold,  though 
the  thermometer  stood  no  lower  than  5°  below  zero,  he 
rejoined  us  and  our  march  was  resumed.  Sometime  after 
midday  we  reached  an  empty  igloo,  and  entered  it  for 
lunch,  and  it  seemed  there  was  need  for  further  frying 
of  doughnuts,  which  operation  I  disliked  so  much  for  its 
inflaming  of  my  eyes  that  I  went  outside  and  walked  up 
and  down  the  beach  and  played  with  the  dogs  while  it 
proceeded. 

Long  after  dark  we  left  the  beach  trail  and  entered 
upon  one  of  the  long  lagoons  that  line  this  coast  for  an 
hundred  miles  or  so,  receiving  all  the  streams  of  the 


182  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

coast,  the  rare  habitations  being  at  the  mouths  of  them. 
Had  we  been  unaccompanied  by  one  with  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  these  parts,  we  should  have  been  compelled 
to  trace  the  whole  mainland  shore,  but  Andy  was  so 
familiar  with  the  locality  that  he  was  able  to  strike 
across  at  such  angle  as  would  bring  him  to  the  dwelling 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Ku-p6u-ruk  river,  our  destination  for 
the  night.  The  lagoon  was  rough  with  hummocks  and 
windrows,  and  presently  Tom  Goose  was  sent  ahead  with 
a  lantern,  as  much,  I  think,  that  the  folks  at  the  igloo 
might  see  our  approach  across  the  broad  lagoon  and  set 
out  a  light  to  guide  us  as  for  our  own  avoidance  of 
obstacles.  The  dancing  light  of  Tom  Goose's  lantern 
far  ahead,  and,  after  a  long  while,  the  tiny  answering 
point  that  pierced  the  darkness  on  the  opposite  beach, 
remain  fixed  in  my  memory,  for  I  was  tired  that  night 
and  the  prospect  of  a  warm,  inhabited  stopping-place 
was  grateful. 

Nor  were  we  disappointed ;  the  house  at  Sing-i-too-rok 
was  clean  and  comfortable  and  we  were  received  with 
evident  gratification,  the  people  being  accustomed  to  visit 
Point  Hope  and  attached  to  that  mission.  But  it  was 
small,  and  already  had  six  occupants,  so  that  with  our 
party  it  sheltered  eleven  that  night.  We  had  to  eat 
in  relays,  and  the  wisdom  of  Andy's  midday  cooking 
was  evident.  It  was  when  we  had  said  our  prayers  and 
begun  to  make  disposition  for  the  night,  however,  that 
the  narrowness  of  our  quarters  appeared  in  its  full  in- 
convenience. The  apartment  was  rectangular,  with  its 
door  in  the  middle.  At  either  end  were  the  bunks  of  the 
family,  and  the  remaining  floor  space,  broken  by  a  cook- 
ing stove  and  a  heater,  was  at  our  service  for  repose, 
but  by  no  ingenuity  whatever  could  we  so  arrange  our- 
selves that  our  sleeping-bags  did  not  overlap. 

Underneath  one  of  the  bunks  was  the  lair  of  an  ancient 
woman  of  such  a  strikingly  wild  appearance  that  when 
I  first  saw  her  I  thought  she  might  have  been  one  of 
Macbeth 's  witches.     Her  long  grey  matted  hair  was 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BAEROW  183 

tousled  about  her  shoulders  and  a  ragged  fur  garment 
half  revealed  and  half  concealed  her  withered  breasts. 
But  she  proved  of  such  volubility  and  animation,  scold- 
ing and  laughter  following  so  closely  upon  one  another, 
that  the  witch-like  impression  soon  passed.  All  around 
her  were  her  little  personal  possessions,  and  she  had  a 
seal-oil  lamp  at  which  she  did  her  own  cooking.  She  was 
incessantly  working  and  chattering;  never  was  such  an 
industrious  and  garrulous  old  lady,  her  flow  of  talk 
interrupted  only  when  she  put  fibres  of  reindeer  sinew 
in  her  mouth  to  moisten  them  before  rolling  them  into 
thread  with  her  hands.  She  was  evidently  a  woman  of 
character  and  will,  and  from  her  den  under  the  bunk  she 
seemed  to  rule  the  household. 

The  family  had  made  progress  in  the  arts  of  civiliza- 
tion, for  the  cabin  was  neat  and  clean  and  provided  with 
many  conveniences,  but  evidently  the  old  woman  was 
wholly  unreconstructed;  she  would  have  none  of  them; 
and  I  realized  once  more  that  woman  is  the  true  con- 
servative element  in  human  society — a  consideration 
which  the  defeated  opponents  of  female  suffrage  may 
take  comfort  in.  She  was  the  most  entirely  unsophisti- 
cated woman  I  ever  saw,  and,  as  I  thought,  somewhat 
defiantly  retentive  of  primitive  custom.  The  natural 
operations  of  her  body  were  no  more  cause  of  shame  to 
her  than  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide  or  the  falling  of 
the  snow;  she  made  no  pretence  to  hide  them  but  talked 
and  laughed  meanwhile,  and  I  fancied  that  she  was  say- 
ing in  Eskimo  that  there  was  no  false  modesty  about 
her.  We  felt  fortunate  in  that  we  had  already  supped. 
Every  now  and  then  would  come  some  vivacious  sally 
from  her  corner  that  provoked  general  laughter  in  which 
she  heartily  joined. 

When  we  began  our  preparations  for  sleep  she  set  up 
some  sort  of  framework  that  supported  a  curtain  about 
her,  more  to  mark  out  the  inviolable  limits  of  her 
demesne,  I  think,  than  from  a  desire  of  privacy.  In  his 
efforts  to  wedge  himself  within  the  exiguous  space  left 


184  A  WINTEE  CIRCUIT 

to  him,  Walter  managed  to  knock  down  this  framework 
with  the  toe  of  his  bag,  whereupon  the  old  woman  set 
up  a  screech  and  volleyed  out  a  thunderous  tirade,  end- 
ing with  loud  laughter,  while  Walter  hastened  to  replace 
the  screen.  But  Walter  was  six  feet  tall,  and  he  had 
no  more  than  composed  himself  to  sleep  than  an  incau- 
tious stretching  of  his  legs  brought  the  end  of  his  bag 
in  contact  with  her  precarious  partition  and  down  it 
came  again.  This  time  she  was  not  content  with  lifting 
up  her  voice;  she  grabbed  a  stick  that  lay  beside  her 
and  poked  the  boy  in  the  ribs  through  his  bag  until  he 
crawled  out  and  readjusted  the  thing,  scolding  him  all 
the  time  most  vehemently  but  ending  by  joining  in  the 
laughter  with  which  we  were  convulsed.  I  wish  with  all 
my  heart  that  I  knew  what  she  was  saying,  and  would 
have  liked  to  spend  the  next  day  here,  digging  into  her 
mind  with  the  aid  of  a  good  interpreter.  She  must  have 
been  a  perfect  mine  of  ancient  lore.  But  Walter,  though 
not  insensible  to  the  humorous  side  of  her  character, 
said  to  me  when  we  were  loading  up  in  the  morning, 
*' That's  the  most  awful  old  woman  I  ever  saw  in  my 
life!"  She  was  indeed — flabbergasting;  I  can  think  of 
no  other  word  to  describe  her,  but  her  strength  of  char- 
acter evidently  commanded  the  respect  of  all  the  others, 
and  I  think  there  was  no  malice  or  even  real  anger  in 
her  most  violent  objurgations.  Andy  evidently  held  her 
in  some  awe;  he  said,  half  apologetically,  **Ipanee 
Eskimo;  very  old  woman,  very  wise  woman;  maybe  go 
to  heaven,  maybe  go  to  hell;  no  sabe,"  with  the  air  that 
if  he  had  the  disposal  of  her  eternal  destiny  he  would 
hardly  know  what  to  do  and  might  even  have  to  ask 
advice,  which  was  quite  an  admission  for  Andy. 

We  all  enjoyed  our  sleep  so  much,  and  it  took  so  long 
next  morning  to  cook  and  eat  in  relays,  that  it  was 
eleven  o'clock  when  we  pulled  out.  All  day  long  our 
course  lay  on  the  surface  of  the  lagoon.  Hydro- 
graphically  this  coast  reminded  me  of  the  southwest 
coast  of  Texas,  with  the  Laguna  Madre  stretching  from 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  185 

Corpus  Christi  Bay  to  the  mouth  of  the  Kio  Grrande, 
though  the  narrow  sandspit  that  divides  this  lagoon 
from  the  Arctic  Ocean  matches  Padre  Island  only  in 
length;  and  I  daresay,  judging  from  the  map,  that  the 
coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Danzig  would  afford  a  better  parallel 
than  the  coast  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  But  nowhere  save 
in  the  Arctic  regions  could  there  be  such  scene  of  complete 
desolation.  A  clear  bright  day,  growing  steadily  colder 
and  clearer,  gave  unwonted  scope  of  vision,  but  as 
Walter  said,  '^Most  of  the  time  you  can't  see  anything, 
and  when  it  clears  up  there's  nothing  to  see!"  The 
lagoon  was  so  broad  that  the  mainland  was  just  a  distant 
brown  line  rising  a  little  above  the  level  of  the  ice,  while 
the  sandspit  on  the  other  hand  was  indistinguishable. 
The  surface  began  to  be  abominably  rough,  with  hard, 
frequent  windrows  called  by  the  antarctic  explorers 
' '  sastrugi, ' '  and  since  there  is  need  for  a  distinctive  word 
for  the  formation,  I  do  not  see  why  this  Kussian  word 
should  not  be  used  (Sir  Douglas  Mawson  says  it  is  Rus- 
sian; I  cannot  find  it  in  the  dictionaries).  While  they 
have  a  regular  general  direction  due  to  the  wind  that 
carved  them  out  of  the  snow,  they  often  curl  into  very 
fantastic  shapes,  and  they  now  became  very  troublesome, 
the  sleds  bumping  over  them  so  violently  that  the  old 
one  began  to  be  pretty  badly  knocked  about,  and  some 
of  the  uprights,  already  strained  and  sprung,  to  show 
signs  of  giving  way.  This  sled  had  been  used  all  the 
previous  winter,  and  this  winter  had  been  roughly 
handled  on  the  portages  before  we  reached  the  Arctic 
coast,  and  Walter  took  a  sudden  notion  to  abandon  it. 
So  we  stopped ;  and  Tom  Goose,  whom  we  had  fed  lately 
and  who  had  a  hankering  after  our  grub  box,  so  that 
he  began  to  travel  as  much  with  us  as  with  Andy,  helped 
us  to  transfer  all  the  load  to  the  new  sled  and  hitch  all 
the  dogs  to  it.  We  left  the  sled  standing  in  the  middle 
of  the  lagoon,  telling  Tom  that  he  might  have  it  if  he 
wanted  it,  and  he  declared  his  purpose  of  picking  it  up 
on  his  return.    I  was  struck  with  the  considerable  dis- 


186  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

tance  from  which  we  could  still  see  that  sled,  standing  all 
alone  on  the  ice,  after  we  resumed  our  march.  Thirteen 
dogs  at  the  one  sled  moved  it  smartly  along;  but  with 
the  constantly  increasing  cold  the  iron  runners  clave  to 
the  rough  granular  snow,  and  with  its  top-heavy  load  it 
was  in  constant  danger  of  upsetting  among  the  sastrugi. 
At  noon  the  thermometer  had  fallen  to  — 31°. 

All  the  afternoon  the  monotonous  travel  continued 
with  little  chance  of  riding,  so  rough  was  the  going,  and 
it  was  just  six  o'clock,  and  long  since  dark,  when  we 
reached  Point  Lay.  George  I.  Lay  was  the  naturalist  of 
Beechey's  expedition,  but  beyond  his  name  amongst  the 
ship's  company,  and  a  reference  to  his  preparation  of 
specimens  in  the  preface,  I  find  only  a  single  mention  of 
him  in  the  whole  of  Beechey's  narrative.  That  one, 
however,  is  of  much  interest  to  me.  While  wintering 
between  her  first  and  second  visits  to  the  Arctic,  the 
Blossom  touched  at  the  Loo-Choo  islands  between  For- 
mosa and  Japan,  then  little  known,  and  Beechey  records 
that  both  he  and  Mr.  Lay  succeeded  in  distributing 
some  little  books  in  Chinese  given  them  by  the  famous 
Dr.  Morrison,  the  first  Protestant  missionary  to  China, 
whose  Chinese  dictionary,  published  in  six  volumes  by 
the  East  India  Company  at  a  cost  of  $60,000,  brought 
him  the  coveted  distinction  of  election  to  the  Eoyal 
Society.  Dr.  Morrison  is  also  remembered  as  having 
established  the  first  medical  mission.  Beechey  seems  to 
have  been  a  devout  man,  and  Lay,  from  this  single  inci- 
dent, I  judge  to  have  been  like-minded.  It  is  curious 
that  the  Russians,  who  had  considerable  trouble  with 
the  names  given  by  the  English  navigators,  trans- 
literated this  name  on  their  charts  as  though  it  were 
descriptive  of  layers,  just  as  they  misconstrued  Point 
Hope  as  honouring  a  cardinal  virtue  instead  of  a  lord 
of  the  admiralty.  I  have  been  told  that  on  German  maps 
Point  Hope  is  still  ''Hoffnung." 

There  were  two  inhabited  cabins  at  Point  Lay,  perched 
above   one   of   the   few   entrances    to   the   lagoon,    or 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  187 

*' passes"  as  they  would  be  called  on  the  Texas  coast, 
on  a  height  of  sandbank,  and  Walter  and  Tom  Goose  and 
I  were  received  into  one,  and  Andy  and  his  remaining 
companion  into  the  other.  It  was  a  clean  and  comfort- 
able dwelling  and  not  so  crowded  as  last  night 's  lodging, 
for  there  was  but  a  man  and  his  wife  and  a  child  or  two. 
I  found  them  devout,  simple  people,  with  enough  Eng- 
lish to  enable  me  to  make  myself  understood,  and  I 
laboured  before  we  went  to  bed  to  give  them  some  fur- 
ther instruction. 

Just  before  turning  in  I  walked  to  the  edge  of  the 
sandbank.  It  was  another  wonderful  Arctic  night.  Again 
the  stars  twinkled  in  countless  myriads,  again  a  sportive 
aurora  flitted  hither  and  thither  across  the  sky.  But  the 
thermometer  stood  at  — 40°,  and  a  keen  air  moved  from 
the  north  that  cut  like  a  knife.  The  night  was  as  cruel 
as  it  was  beautiful,  and  I  was  glad  to  get  within  doors 
again  and  to  sleep. 

The  next  morning  after  breakfast  we  were  busied  in 
going  over  our  stuff  to  see  what  we  had  that  was  super- 
fluous, that  we  might  lighten  our  top-heavy  load  by 
abandoning  it  here,  when  Andy  came  in  and  very 
solemnly  said,  ''The  people  in  the  other  house  want  to 
hear  you  tell  them  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ."  I  think 
he  had  decided  to  put  me  to  a  test,  himself  as  the  inter- 
preter, and  I  gladly  went  over  with  him  and  spoke  to 
the  eight  or  ten  attentive  and  interested  people  by  his 
mouth.  I  am  glad  to  know  that  Mr.  Thomas  visited  them 
later  and  made  some  stay  with  them. 

Walter  was  thus  left  to  his  own  judgment  as  to  what 
should  be  discarded  of  our  load,  and  he  cut  it  down 
beyond  what  I  should  have  agreed  to,  dowering  our 
hostess  with  grub  and  with  plates  and  cups  and  pots  and 
pans  that  were  in  excess  of  the  minimum  he  judged  neces- 
sary for  our  cooking  and  eating.  I  like  to  have  a  spare 
plate  and  vessel  or  two  when  I  am  cooking  and  frequently 
found  myself  inconvenienced  thereafter,  actually  having 
to  buy  things  at  Point  Barrow  to  replace  some  of  those 


188  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

discarded  here ;  but  a  considerable  reduction  in  bulk  and 
weight  was  effected,  and  since  all  was  loaded  and  lashed 
when  I  returned  there  was  no  more  to  be  said.  I  recall 
Point  Lay  as  the  pleasantest  place  of  sojourn  since  we 
left  Point  Hope. 

The  next  day  was  a  repetition  of  the  preceding  one, 
the  second  full  day  upon  the  lagoon,  a  long  weary  grind 
of  nine  hours.  But  it  was  made  distinctly  more  uncom- 
fortable by  the  keen  air  from  the  north,  moving  at  a 
temperature  that  did  not  rise  above  — 35°  all  day.  My 
nose  was  frozen  again  and  again.  The  mail-dogs  were 
grown  so  weary  with  this  continuous  travel  that  they 
lagged  behind,  and  my  team  took  the  lead,  Walter  run- 
ning ahead  of  them  for  hours  to  set  a  pace.  Nothing 
could  be  more  desolately  monotonous  than  the  whole 
day's  journey  on  the  wide  lagoon,  with  not  a  single  land- 
mark of  any  kind  from  morning  to  night.  I  had  pro- 
posed to  Andy  that  we  give  the  dogs  a  day's  rest  at 
Point  Lay,  but  he  had  brushed  aside  the  suggestion. 
That  night  we  lay  in  a  wretched  uninhabited  igloo  at 
Uf-oo-kok,  at  the  mouth  of  the  stream  of  that  name, 
almost  exactly  upon  the  70th  parallel  of  latitude,  and  for 
hours  the  Eskimos  tried  out  whale  blubber  over  the 
primus  stove  and  then  fried  doughnuts  in  it,  our  eyes 
inflamed  by  the  vapour  to  such  an  extent  that  reading 
was  impossible ;  yet  the  quarters  were  so  narrow  that  we 
could  not  go  to  bed  until  they  were  ready  for  bed  also. 
There  was  nothing  for  it  but  the  patient  endurance  of  a 
misery  we  could  not  alleviate. 

I  do  not  know  what  Andy  would  have  done  had  we  not 
been  with  him.  I  had  given  him  a  gallon  can  of  alcohol 
when  we  decided  to  depend  upon  the  solidified  prepara- 
tion, glad  to  get  rid  of  it,  and  for  days  he  had  had  noth- 
ing else  to  start  his  stove  with.  And  now  he  came  to  us 
like  the  foolish  virgins  in  the  parable  with  ''Give  us  of 
your  oil,  for  our  lamps  are  gone  out,"  and  we  shared 
our  kerosene  with  him.  Tom  Goose  had  by  this  attached 
himself  almost  exclusively  to  our  menage,  supplementing 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  189 

it  by  chunks  of  boiled  seal-meat  from  the  mail  cui- 
sine when  our  bill  of  fare  was  not  as  largely  carniv- 
orous as  he  desired.  I  suppose  Andy  would  have  been 
more  careful  of  his  oil  had  he  not  counted  on  falling 
back  upon  our  supply,  and  there  would  have  been  less 
frying  of  doughnuts  and  more  chewing  of  frozen  fish  and 
seal-meat.  It  did  not  lessen  the  intolerable  irritation  of 
his  frying  to  know  that  we  had  furnished  him  with  the 
fuel  for  it. 

We  were  no  more  than  established  in  our  miserable 
domicile  than  the  weather  changed,  the  chill  north  wind 
ceased,  the  temperature  rose,  snow  began  to  fall  and  a 
gale  started  from  the  south  which  lasted  three  days. 
When  we  left  next  morning  it  was  so  warm  that  furs 
were  soon  doffed,  and  by  noon  the  thermometer  was 
standing  at  20°  above  zero  instead  of  25°  below.  At 
half-past  one  we  reached  a  halfway  igloo  at  a  place 
called  Kun-ney-ook,  where  we  were  hospitably  received 
in  quarters  so  warm  from  overcrowding  that  most  of 
the  company  sat  stripped  to  the  waist.  Here  we  lay  two 
hours  while  Andy  and  his  companions  ate  a  heavy  meal 
that  the  women  cooked,  Walter  and  I  content  with  our 
thermos  lunch.  These  Eskimos  have  an  astonishing 
capacity  for  food  when  it  is  obtainable,  proportionate,  I 
suppose,  to  their  capacity  for  doing  without  it  when 
it  is  not  to  be  had.  I  had  baked  several  pans  full  of 
sausage  rolls  at  Point  Hope,  and  one  of  them  served 
both  of  us  for  lunch  each  day  with  the  addition  of  the 
hot  cocoa. 

Snow  was  falling  heavily  when  we  resumed  our  march, 
and  it  soon  grew  dark  under  the  overcast  skies.  A  little 
later  we  left  the  lagoon  for  the  beach  and  kept  it  until 
we  reached  Icy  Cape  at  about  7  o'clock. 

For  nearly  fifty  years  this  was  the  most  northerly 
known  point  of  the  mainland  of  America,  Captain  Cook 
having  named  it  in  1778  from  the  ice  which  encumbered 
it.  Hearne,  indeed,  had  asserted  a  higher  latitude  for 
the  mouth  of  the  Coppermine  river  in  1771,  but  the  claim, 


190  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

always  disputed,  had  in  Beechey's  time  already  been  dis- 
proved by  Franklin.  The  pack  ice  commonly  has  its 
southern  limit  in  this  neighbourhood,  and  prevented 
Cook's  advance,  as  it  did  Beechey's,  the  further  explora- 
tions to  the  north  of  the  latter 's  expedition  being  carried 
out  by  Elson  and  Smyth  in  the  Blossom's  barge,  though 
Beechey  says  that  had  further  exploration  depended  upon 
the  Blossom  alone  it  is  probable  he  would  have  endeav- 
oured to  proceed  at  all  hazards  notwithstanding  that  his 
orders  were  positive  to  avoid  being  beset  in  the  ship. 
From  this  place  to  Point  Barrow  all  the  place-names  that 
are  not  Eskimo  are  Beechey's  names.  The  settlement, 
which  has  a  disused  government  schoolhouse  and  a  large 
store  building  besides  about  a  score  of  igloos,  occupied 
or  unoccupied,  lies  on  the  mainland  opposite  a  consider- 
able break  or  ''pass"  in  the  sandbank  that  forms  the 
great  lagoon,  and  it  is  the  point  of  this  sandbank  that  is 
actually  Icy  Cape.  The  coast  takes  a  further  abrupt 
turn  to  the  eastward  from  this  point,  which  would  render 
it  notable  from  the  sea;  otherwise  it  is  low  and  in- 
conspicuous. 

We  were  lodged  in  the  store  building,  a  large  thrift- 
less house  with  all  sorts  of  coal-oil  stoves  and  lamps — 
but  no  oil.  There  seemed  no  stock  of  goods  nor  any  busi- 
ness conducted;  the  man  was  absent,  as  were  most  of  the 
men  of  the  place,  and  our  hostess  was  a  brisk,  intelligent 
but  quite  untrained  girl  who  seemed  to  have  the  makings 
of  a  housekeeper,  were  there  someone  who  would  take 
the  pains  to  teach  her.  She  had  a  driftwood  fire  quickly 
going  in  the  coal  stove,  and  a  kettle  boiling,  by  which  my 
cooking  operations  were  greatly  expedited,  and  I  spared 
enough  oil  from  our  rapidly  diminishing  store  to  supply 
one  of  the  numerous  empty  lamps;  a  hideous  thing  with 
twisted  brass  ornaments  and  dangling  prisms  and  the 
crudest  of  red  roses  painted  upon  its  opal  shade,  evi- 
dently the  pride  of  someone's  heart.  I  daresay  a  pass- 
ing ship  gathered  quite  a  bunch  of  skins  or  many  pounds 
of  whalebone  for  that  gewgaw. 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  191 

We  had  now  travelled  nine  continuous  days,  including 
two  Sundays,  and  I  was  determined  to  attempt  to  secure 
a  day  of  rest  for  ourselves  and  our  dogs,  but  when  I 
went  over  to  Andy 's  lodging  and  broached  the  matter  to 
him,  he  gave  a  curt  refusal.  His  own  dogs  were  much 
more  tired  than  ours,  and  he  had  ten  days  within  which 
to  finish  his  journey,  which  he  estimated  would  take  no 
more  than  five.  Thinking  that  dog-feed  might  be  in 
question  I  offered  to  buy  all  the  food  they  could  eat 
while  they  lay  over,  for  I  had  discovered  that  there 
was  walrus  meat  to  be  had  here,  though  at  a  high  price. 
But  he  simply  said,  "You  want  to  stay,  all  right;  I 
go."- 

So  I  sought  for  someone  to  conduct  us  to  the  village 
of  Wainwright,  said  to  be  two  days'  journey,  but  could 
find  no  one.  The  men  and  the  dog-teams  were  all  away, 
and  we  were  reluctantly  compelled  to  pursue  our  jour- 
ney. It  was  very  annoying,  and  I  resented  Andy's 
obstinacy,  but  there  seemed  nothing  for  it  but  to  go  on 
with  him.  So  I  made  such  hurried  visits  to  the  igloos 
of  the  place  as  the  time  permitted  while  Walter  was 
loading  and  hitching,  and  we  started  along  the  beach, 
amidst  evident  signs  of  a  gathering  storm,  about  9 
o'clock.  By  noon  the  high  south  wind  had  shifted  to 
southeast,  the  advancing  mass  of  clouds  had  completely 
obscured  the  sun,  and  it  began  to  snow.  Very  shortly  we 
were  in  the  midst  of  the  heaviest  driving  snowstorm  of 
the  winter.  Just  before  the  snow  began  to  fall  Andy  left 
his  sleds  and  took  rapidly  across  the  lagoon  on  foot 
towards  a  reindeer  camp  with  which  he  had  some  busi- 
ness, and  when  we  went  on  hour  after  hour  amidst  the 
blinding  snowstorm  and  saw  nothing  more  of  him  I  began 
to  be  seriously  uneasy,  though  his  assistants  were  not 
perturbed.  It  was  8  o'clock  at  night,  as  we  approached 
a  low  mudbank,  when  he  appeared  ahead,  waiting  for 
us,  and  I  thought  it  a  very  remarkable  exhibition  of 
familiarity  with  that  trackless  tundra  country.  He  was 
not  unconscious  of  his  tour  de  force,  for  he  waited  till 


192  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

my  sled  came  up  and  said,  ''You  think  mail-man  get 
lost?    This  mail-man  never  get  lost." 

"We  dragged  along  a  couple  of  hours  more  through 
deepening  snow  until,  very  weary,  we  reached  the  end  of 
the  long  lagoon  at  last  at  a  place  named  Me-lik-tahk-vik, 
and  squeezed  ourselves  into  a  crowded  igloo.  "We  were 
surprised  and  disgusted  that  the  mail-dogs  were  left  un- 
hitched and  unfed  all  that  night.  Freed  of  his  harness 
a  dog  can  make  the  best  of  the  wretched  conditions  of 
his  bivouac  in  the  wind  and  the  snow,  curling  up  into  a 
ball  and  turning  his  back  to  the  wind,  but  confined  and 
constrained  by  his  gear  and  still  attached  to  the  sled  he 
is  deprived  of  even  that  poor  comfort.  There  was  no 
excuse  for  it ;  there  were  but  two  of  us  and  three  of  them, 
yet  we  got  all  our  dogs  chained  up  and  fed,  or,  I  am 
sure,  we  should  not  have  been  able  to  eat  and  sleep  our- 
selves. "Walter  was  especially  indignant  at  this  viola- 
tion of  the  code  of  the  dog  man,  and  his  feeling  towards 
Andy  thereafter  was  like  the  feeling  of  the  seamen 
towards  the  officers  who  abandoned  the  ship  full  of  pil- 
grims that  had  sprung  a  leak  in  Conrad's  Lord  Jim — he 
had  done  something  that  dog  men  don't  do.  Walter 
declared  he  would  certainly  tell  the  postmaster  at  Point 
Barrow  of  the  way  the  mail-dogs  are  treated.  And  he 
did;  the  only  time  I  ever  knew  him  to  ^'make  trouble, "^ 
as  the  natives  say,  for  anyone.  This  was  their  tenth 
day  of  continuous  hard  travel,  and  here  they  were  utterly 
neglected  and  left  hungry,  with  three  men  to  look  after 
them.  Andy  had  expected  to  make  the  remaining  win- 
ter trip  with  the  mail,  but  another  man  was  sent ;  though 
whether  Walter's  representations  had  anything  to  do 
with  that,  I  know  not;  I  think  probably  not. 

The  next  day  there  was  almost  a  repetition  of  the 
weather  happenings.  We  started  about  nine  along  the 
mainland  beach,  the  lagoon  ended,  in  clear  sunshine  and 
a  south  wind;  presently  a  cloud  rose  rapidly  from  the 
south  and  overspread  the  sky,  and  by  noon  it  was  heavily 
snowing  again  with  even  greater  force  of  driving  wind. 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  193 

It  was  remarked  in  one  of  the  reviews  of  my  previous 
volume  of  winter  travel,  that  it  was  *' crowded  with 
assorted  weather."  The  weather  is  always  of  prime 
importance  to  a  traveller,  but  a  man  must  travel  the 
Arctic  coast  to  realize  how  completely  weather  con- 
siderations dominate  all  other  circumstances  of  travel. 
At  25°  below  zero,  with  a  keen  wind  against  one,  all  the 
furs,  the  inner  and  the  outer,  are  required.  Perhaps 
within  a  few  hours,  when  the  wind  has  lulled  and  the 
skies  become  overcast,  the  temperature  rises  so  rapidly 
that  furs  become  intolerable.  A  driving  snowstorm  de- 
mands that  the  inner  furs  be  covered  with  the  cotton 
artigi  or  parkee;  if  it  blow  behind,  one  is  carried  along 
with  much  increased  speed,  but  if  it  be  ahead,  it  is 
perhaps  impossible  to  make  progress  against  it  at  all. 
On  a  walking  trip  over  the  fine  highways  of  the  Alps 
the  weather  in  summer  may  play  havoc  with  one's 
itinerary.  I  shall  never  forget  a  wretched  experience  in 
crossing  the  Albula  Pass  when  heavy  snow  on  the  sum- 
mit turned  to  pouring  rain,  and  when  we  were  drenched 
to  the  skin,  turned  again  to  freezing,  so  that  our  sodden 
clothes  were  grown  stiff  with  frost  ere  we  reached  our 
inn.  But  such  vicissitudes  are  trivial  in  comparison  with 
the  paramount  influence  which  weather  exercises  upon 
winter  travel  in  the  Arctic  regions.  A  narrative  of  such 
travel  must  be  ''crowded  with  assorted  weather"  if  it 
be  any  true  picture.  One  is  simply  the  sport  of  the 
changing  weather,  and  the  whole  art  of  travel  is  the  art 
of  rapid  adjustment  to  it. 

Our  host  of  last  night  accompanied  us  with  his  wife 
and  child  and  a  dog-team,  bound  for  Wainwright,  and 
when  we  reached  the  inlet  of  that  name  he  went  ahead 
with  a  pole  sounding  the  ice,  for  the  incessant  south 
wind  had  driven  water  through  the  tidal  cracks,  and 
there  was  doubt  if  we  might  cross  to  the  peninsula  upon 
which  the  village  is  situated,  or  would  be  compelled  to 
the  long  circuit  of  the  inlet.  For  a  few  score  yards  the 
condition  of  the  ice  was  somewhat  precarious,  but  we 


194  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

went  quickly  over  it  to  firmer,  older  ice,  and  were  soon 
upon  a  sandbar  that  runs  north  and  south  in  the  midst 
of  the  inlet,  after  traversing  which  for  some  miles  we 
crossed  the  inlet  ice  to  the  peninsula,  climbed  a  steep 
bank  and  passed  along  the  high  sandbank  to  the  village, 
the  whole  population  turning  out  to  meet  us  and  great 
excitement  prevailing. 

Mr,  and  Mrs.  Forrest,  the  teachers  of  the  government 
school,  both  in  the  complete  Eskimo  costume  that  the 
weather  demanded,  Mrs.  Forrest  with  her  baby  on  her 
back  in  the  sensible  native  style,  came  out  most  cordially 
to  insist  upon  our  staying  with  them,  and  indeed  we  were 
only  too  rejoiced  to  accept  their  kind  hospitality.  It 
was  a  keen  pleasure  to  enter  upon  civilized  domestic 
life  again,  and  we  resolved  that  here  we  would  stay  for 
several  days'  rest,  let  Andy  do  what  he  would. 

Wainwright  Inlet  was  named  for  Beechey's  lieutenant, 
John  Wainwright,  the  two  points  of  sandbank  that  form 
the  opening  being  named  Point  Collie  and  Point  Marsh, 
for  his  surgeon,  Alexander  Collie,  and  his  purser, 
George  Marsh.  The  village  at  this  place  appears  to  be 
one  of  the  most  favourably  situated  on  the  coast.  There 
are  good  coal  seams  within  six  miles  inland,  on  the  banks 
of  a  creek,  and  coal  costs  but  fifty  cents  per  sack  of  100 
pounds,  which  is  $10  a  ton,  the  cost  being,  of  course, 
only  that  of  digging  and  transporting ;  the  lagoon  behind 
the  village  affords  excellent  fishing  under  the  ice  all 
the  winter;  the  sea-ice  gives  good  sealing  and  walrus 
hunting.  During  the  previous  summer  150  walruses 
were  obtained  by  these  people.  The  situation  is  not  so 
good  for  the  brief  season  of  flaw  whaling,  and  at  this 
time  many  of  the  inhabitants  go  to  Point  Barrow,  though 
some  whaling  is  carried  on  from  here. 

Including  the  outlying  points,  the  total  native  popu- 
lation is  counted  at  190,  187  persons  having  been  present 
at  the  last  Christmas  festivities.  The  school  had  an 
enrollment  of  fifty-eight  children  with  an  average  attend- 
ance of  thirty.    Some  2,300  reindeer  are  attached  to  this 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  195 

village,  divided  into  three  herds,  which  have,  altogether, 
twenty-six  herders  and  apprentices,  and  these  men,  with 
their  wives  and  children,  withdraw  no  small  part  of  the 
population  from  the  village.  The  ownership  of  the  deer 
is  even  more  mdely  distributed,  almost  every  family  in 
the  place  o^vning  at  least  a  few,  one  dollar  per  deer  per 
annum  being  paid  to  the  herders  by  owners  who  take  no 
share  in  herding,  an  arrangement  usual  elsewhere  also. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forrest  were  a  young  east  Oregonian 
couple  who  seemed  to  me  excellently  well  adapted  to  the 
work.  It  takes  no  little  courage  to  bring  a  bride  to  such 
a  lonely  place,  with  no  white  woman  nearer  than  Point 
Barrow,  three  days'  journey  to  the  north.  Dr.  Spence 
had  come  down  from  that  place  when  Mrs.  Forrest's 
baby  was  born,  and  I  heard  again  of  his  kindness  and 
gentleness.  Mr.  Forrest's  life  on  a  ranch  was  of  value 
to  him  here,  his  knowledge  of  cattle  a  help  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  reindeer  herd  under  his  charge,  and  the 
general  handiness  and  capability  which  a  country 
breeding  brings,  found  many  opportunities  of  exer- 
cise in  the  devising  and  constructing  of  domestic  con- 
veniences. 

There  was  no  mission  at  the  place,  nor  ever  had  been, 
and  the  school-teacher  was  looked  to  for  religious  teach- 
ing and  the  regular  conduct  of  divine  service.  A  co- 
operative store  was  also  attached  to  the  school,  in  charge 
of  the  teacher,  and  made  no  small  demand  upon  his 
time,  so  that  what  with  the  school,  the  reindeer  herds, 
the  general  care  of  the  native  affairs,  the  guidance  of 
the  village  council,  the  settlement  of  disputes,  the  con- 
stant readiness  to  give  patient  hearing  and  advice,  Mr. 
Forrest  was  a  very  busy  man  and  seemed  to  handle  his 
manifold  duties  with  zeal  and  success.  There  had  been 
only  one  other  white  resident  during  the  Forrests'  term 
of  service,  a  trader  competing  with  the  co-operative  store, 
and  his  activities  had  brought  liim  into  a  conflict  with 
the  school  management  which  was  perhaps  inevitable, 
but  which  his  conduct  and  character  had  deepened  into 


196  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

antagonism.  He  had  ''sold  out"  shortly  before  onr 
arrival  and  had  withdrawn  to  the  northeast,  where  we 
shall  come  in  contact  with  him  ourselves  by  and  by.  His 
successor,  we  learned,  was  a  more  desirable  neighbour. 
What  a  very  important,  and  in  many  cases  what  a  very 
disturbing  and  ignoble  part  the  little  local  white  traders 
play  in  native  affairs!  But  for  the  missions  and  the 
schools  the  natives  would  be  wholly  and  helplessly  in  the 
hands  of  these  men. 

Oxenstiern's  oft-quoted  observation  to  his  son  about 
the  little  wisdom  with  which  the  world  is  governed,  fre- 
quently finds  fresh  illustration  in  Alaskan  affairs.  Here 
on  the  one  hand  was  a  government  school  in  connection 
with  which  had  been  established  by  the  Bureau  of  Edu- 
cation a  co-operative  store,  thus  also  a  government  enter- 
prise. Here,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  government  mail 
service  making  three  round  trips  during  the  winter.  On 
the  north-bound  trip  the  burden  of  the  mail-sacks,  be- 
sides letters,  is  chiefly  newspapers  and  magazines,  but  on 
the  south-bound  trip  that  burden,  besides  letters,  is 
wholly  furs  going  outside  by  parcel  post  to  catch  the 
spring  auction  sales  at  which  commonly  the  best  prices 
are  secured.  Now  by  a  regulation  of  the  post-office,  if 
the  full  contracted  ''limit"  of  weight  be  ready  for 
despatch  at  the  office  from  which  the  mail  starts,  it  must 
be  taken  and  no  more  can  be  picked  up  at  any  office 
served.  Point  Barrow,  as  it  was  once  the  chief  depot  of 
the  whaling  industry,  is  now,  since  the  decay  of  that 
business,  the  chief  depot  of  a  fur-gathering  industry  in 
the  hands  of  the  representative  of  one  of  the  largest 
American  furriers.  Each  time  that  the  mail  leaves  Point 
Barrow  it  carries  its  limit  of  weight  in  furs  shipped  to 
the  San  Francisco  house,  and  the  co-operative  store  at 
Wainwright  is  deprived  of  all  opportunity  of  marketing 
its  skins  save  by  the  conveyance  of  the  one  ship  that 
comes  in  the  summer.  It  is  thus  also  deprived  of  the 
chance  to  "turn  over"  its  invested  capital,  of  the 
chance  to  accumulate  funds  "outside"  upon  which  it 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  197 

could  draw  for  the  purchase  of  its  annual  stock.  With 
one  hand  beneficent,  the  government  establishes  a  co- 
operative store  by  which  the  natives  may  be  protected 
from  the  extortions  of  local  traders,  and  with  the  other 
hand,  maleficent,  it  paralyzes  the  activities  of  that  store 
and  to  a  large  extent  neutralizes  its  benefit.  Indeed  the 
local  trader  at  the  time  of  our  visit  was  but  an  agent  of 
the  merchant  at  Point  Barrow  and  sent  up  to  him  the 
furs  secured,  who  incorporated  them  with  his  mail  ship- 
ments, and  thus  under  the  very  nose  of  the  teacher 
secured  the  benefit  of  prompt  despatch  to  market  which 
was  denied  the  co-operative  store.  One  does  not  blame 
the  Point  Barrow  merchant,  he  is  warranted  in  making 
the  best  of  his  business  opportunities,  but  that  this  regu- 
lation was  unfair  to  all  the  other  traders  between  Point 
Barrow  and  Kotzebue  Sound  had  been  repeatedly 
pointed  out  to  the  post-ofiice  authorities,  and  I  was  told 
that  the  Bureau  of  Education  had  made  vigorous  rep- 
resentation touching  the  discrimination  against  its  co- 
operative store,  without  any  avail.  A  regulation  was  a 
regulation,  just  as  in  Russia  a  ukase  was  a  ukase — and 
if  the  one  be  as  arbitrary  and  unreasonable  as  the  other, 
what  advantageth  it  that  an  irresponsible  department 
made  it  instead  of  an  irresponsible  autocrat!  An  auto- 
crat sometimes  has  bowels  and  brains,  but  a  department 
has  never  any  of  the  former  and  usually  very  little  of 
the  latter. 

A  young  college  professor  of  my  acquaintance  main- 
tained that  the  chief  need  of  American  universities  is 
a  chair  for  the  co-ordination  of  chairs;  a  school  that 
should  teach  to  each  of  the  various  schools  of  science 
the  advances  that  had  been  made  in  the  others,  so  that 
in  one  classroom  things  should  not  still  be  maintained 
that  had  been  superseded  in  others;  that  biology  might 
be  informed  of  what  had  been  newly  done  in  chemistry, 
and  astronomy  of  the  advances  in  mathematics,  etc.  I 
am  not  academician  enough  to  judge  of  the  need  of  such 
a  corps  de  liaison,  as  our  soldiers  in  France  would  call  it, 


198  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

but  I  am  sure  enough  that  the  United  States  government 
is  sadly  in  need  of  a  Bureau  to  Co-ordinate  Bureaus,  to 
prevent  one  of  them  from  actually  working  against  an- 
other. It  would  need  large  powers,  however,  to  handle 
the  post-office  department — so  far  as  Alaska  is  concerned 
the  most  arbitrary,  capricious,  inefficient  and  unintel- 
ligent of  government  departments,  and  the  one  that,  with 
all  these  engaging  qualities,  comes  most  closely  into  touch 
with  the  life  of  the  ordinary  citizen. 

Due  to  its  parsimonious  policy  of  letting  a  mail  con- 
tract to  the  lowest  white  bidder,  who  in  turn  (in  fact 
if  not  in  form)  lets  it  to  a  lower  native  bidder,  until  the 
remuneration  for  the  actual,  and  very  arduous,  work  is 
cut  down  to  a  point  where  no  more  than  the  barest  of 
livings  is  obtainable — due  to  this  policy  is  the  sight  of 
half-starved,  overworked,  ill-appointed  mail-teams  on 
the  Arctic  coast  such  as  we  had  been  travelling  with,  the 
dogs  mere  bunches  of  bone  and  fur,  the  mail  carriers 
compelled  to  unreasonable  haste  lest  upon  their  arrival 
they  find  their  expenses  have  exceeded  their  emolument. 
I  was  told  that  on  this  coast  it  was  as  true  as  I  knew  it 
to  be  on  the  Yukon,  that  at  the  end  of  the  winter  season 
the  mail  carrier  usually  found  himself  in  debt.  Yet  I 
have  described  the  conditions  of  Alaskan  winter  travel 
on  river  surface  or  coast  ice  in  vain  unless  the  reader 
has  been  able  to  see  for  himself  that  the  men  who  face 
all  weathers  and  all  temperatures  with  the  United  States 
mail  are  as  deserving  of  profit  from  their  labours  as 
those  who  serve  the  government  anywhere. 

Our  two  days^  rest  passed  all  too  rapidly.  I  spent 
several  hours  in  the  schoolroom  each  day  and  was 
pleased  with  what  I  heard  and  saw.  Each  night  there 
was  service,  though  the  interpretation  was  indifferent, 
and  I  baptized  half-a-dozen  babies,  for  there  had  been 
no  visit  from  a  clergyman  for  some  time.  We  slept 
and  ate,  and  it  was  certainly  a  delight  to  get  within  sheets 
again  and  to  sil  down  to  a  board  spread  with  Mrs.  For- 
rest's good  things. 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  199 

Mr.  Forrest  having  told  me  of  a  panic  recently  caused 
by  an  old  woman  who  reported  that  she  had  seen  the 
tracks  of  a  number  of  strangers  in  the  country  behind  the 
inlet  and  raised  the  cry  "the  Indians  are  coming,"  I 
was  glad  to  speak  to  the  congregation  about  the  folly  of 
such  alarms.  I  told  them  that  the  nearest  Indians  to 
them  were  on  the  Koyukuk  river,  nearly  300  miles  away 
in  a  straight  line,  with  the  uninhabited  wilderness  be- 
tween, or  inhabited  only  by  roving  bands  of  their  own 
people;  that  I  knew  these  Koyukuk  Indians  well,  every 
one  of  them;  that  I  had  lived  amongst  them  and  built  a 
mission  for  them,  years  ago;  that  they  were  kindly 
Christian  people  just  like  themselves,  worshipping  the 
same  God,  singing  the  same  hymns ;  that  there  would  be 
as  much  sense  in  being  afraid  that  the  walruses  would 
waddle  out  of  the  water  and  come  into  their  houses  and 
eat  up  their  children,  as  in  being  afraid  of  these  few 
harmless  Indians,  hundreds  of  miles  away. 

Oddly  enough  it  is  only  a  few  years  ago  that  amongst 
these  very  Koyukuk  Indians  a  similar  panic  ensued  upon 
a  rumour  that  the  Huskies  (Eskimos)  were  coming,  and 
one  family  fled  in  haste  to  the  Yukon  and  stayed  there  a 
couple  of  years  before  returning,  as  I  have  told  else- 
where. One  would  like  to  recover  the  lingering  local 
legends  of  raids  and  ambuscades,  of  the  cutting  off  and 
slaughtering  of  venturesome  outlying  hunting  parties 
long  ago,  of  which  this  surviving  fear  is  the  evidence. 
Hearne's  graphic  account  of  the  massacre  of  sleeping 
Eskimos  by  Chipewyan  Indians  at  the  Bloody  Falls  of 
the  Coppermine  river,  of  which  he  was  witness,  throws  a 
flood  of  light  upon  the  old  relations  between  the  Indians 
and  the  Eskimos — now  bartering  and  now  butchering. 
In  reflecting  however  upon  the  mutual  fears  that  perturb 
the  races  today,  one  cannot  but  recall  that  several  times 
during  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  English  were 
quite  unnecessarily  dreading  invasion  by  the  French,  the 
French  were  equally  excited  over  unfounded  apprehen- 
sions of  invasion  by  the  English,  and  that  Dr.  Johnson 


200  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

connnented  upon  the  situation  to  the  effect  that  nothing 
but  mutual  cowardice  preserved  the  peace. 

One  of  the  things  which  interested  me  very  much  was 
the  communal  reindeer-meat  cellar,  reminding  me  in  a 
small  way  of  the  catacombs  of  St.  Calixtus,  though  this 
storehouse  was,  much  of  it,  excavated  out  of  the  solid 
ice  which  underlies  the  sand  and  gravel  on  which  the 
village  is  built.  Passing  into  a  little  frame  house,  and 
opening  a  trap-door  in  the  midst,  we  descended  by  a 
ladder  some  fifteen  or  eighteen  feet,  through  two  more 
trap-doors  into  a  large  vaulted  chamber  with  many 
radiating  alcoves  and  cubicles.  The  lanterns  gleamed 
upon  smooth  surfaces  of  ice  and  upon  lace-like  incrusta- 
tions of  frost  from  the  condensation  of  the  moisture  of 
the  meat. 

Our  plan  had  been  to  lie  here  over  Wednesday  and 
Thursday  and  then,  with  invigorated  teams  and  an  early 
start,  seek  to  reach  Point  Barrow  in  two  days,  which 
we  were  told  could  be  done  under  favourable  conditions. 
A  guide  had  opportunely  shown  himself  in  the  person 
of  one  of  the  two  young  gold-mining  Eskimos  I  spoke 
about  early  in  this  narrative  as  crossing  from  the  Chan- 
delar  to  the  Arctic  coast  by  way  of  a  branch  of  the  Col- 
ville  river.  They  had  reached  Point  Barrow  about  the 
beginning  of  January,  and  one  of  them.  Bob,  had  come 
down  to  Wainwright  on  a  matrimonial  quest,  to  ''catch 
me  a  lady"  as  he  put  it,  but  his  quest  was  unsuccessful 
and  he  was  returning  to  his  companion  at  Point  Barrow 
empty-sledded  and  somewhat  disconsolate. 

But  Thursday  set  in  with  a  resumption  of  the  violent 
gale  from  the  south  of  which  only  Wednesday  had  en- 
joyed an  intermission,  and  it  blew  without  weakening  all 
day  long.  Bob  was  not  willing  to  start  in  the  storm; 
he  had  passed  over  our  course  only  once  in  his  life — 
on  his  way  hither — and  there  was  a  bay  to  cross  and  an 
igloo  to  stop  at  that  he  doubted  if  he  could  find  in  such 
weather;  so  that  it  was  Saturday  morning  ere  we  left 
the  most  hospitable  school  residence,  no  longer  contem- 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  201 

plating  the  effort  to  reach  Point  Barrow  in  two  days, 
since  it  was  now  impossible  to  get  there  for  Sunday. 
Indeed  I  would  willingly  have  stayed  here  over  Sunday 
had  Bob  consented ;  though  Mr.  Forrest,  anxious  to  keep 
us  longer,  yet  agreed  that  it  was  the  part  of  wisdom  to 
take  advantage  of  the  favourable  weather  now  that  the 
gale  had  blown  itself  out. 

Loaded  with  all  sorts  of  cooked  provisions  by  Mrs. 
Forrest's  insistent  kindness,  we  left  Wainwright  about 
eleven  o'clock  of  a  calm,  fresh  morning,  and  made  our 
way  along  the  beach  in  bright  sunshine  for  twenty-five 
miles  to  a  place  called  Ah-ten-muk,  which  must  be  very 
close  to  thQ  Point  Belcher  of  the  maps;  from  the  shore 
quite  indistinguishable  as  a  point,  though  doubtless  suf- 
ficiently visible  from  the  sea  to  warrant  naming,  and  so 
purely  a  navigators'  name,  not  known  or  used  on  shore. 
I  am  not  sorry  that  this  officer's  service  with  Beechey  is 
not  more  notably  marked;  he  has  a  channel  far  to  the 
eastward,  north  of  Bathurst  Island,  where  his  later  and 
more  conspicuous  incompetence  is  more  conspicuously 
commemorated. 

The  igloo,  like  most  at  which  we  stayed,  was  uncom- 
fortably crowded,  but  it  gave  me  opportunity,  with  Bob 's 
assistance,  of  addressing  at  some  length  a  number  of 
natives,  both  evening  and  morning.  Bob's  English, 
fluent  enough  in  a  broken  way,  was  mining  and  trading 
and  mushing  English,  and  had  little  acquaintance  with 
the  thoughts  and  phraseology  of  religion,  so  that  I  was 
compelled  to  be  very  practical  indeed,  which  is  not  al- 
together a  bad  thing  in  addressing  natives.  Is  it  trading 
parlance  alone  that  one's  interpreter  understands? — 
there  is  scope  for  insisting  upon  honesty,  upon  the  fair 
representation  of  articles  to  be  bartered,  upon  the  con- 
scientious payment  of  debts,  upon  doing  without  what 
one  cannot  afford.  And  the  relations  between  the  sexes 
are  sure  to  be  within  the  competence  of  any  interpreter, 
though  one  sometimes  has  to  be  outrageously  frank  to 
be  comprehended  by  one's  intermediary. 


202  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

I  left  with  regret  next  morning,  but  the  bay  to  be 
crossed  lay  now  before  us  with  calm  weather  for  the 
crossing,  so  once  more  I  swallowed  my  distaste  for  Sun- 
day travel  and  we  proceeded.  This  made  the  third  con- 
secutive Sunday  that  we  had  been  on  the  trail — the  most 
heathen  travelling  that  I  ever  did  in  my  life.  Now  and 
again  in  my  winter  journeyings  I  have  been  compelled 
— or  thought  myself  compelled — to  Sunday  travel ;  some- 
times travelling  on  Sunday  was  necessary  to  reach  an 
appointed  place  for  the  next  Sunday,  because  trail  itin- 
eraries are  very  easily  overthrown  by  untoward  circum- 
stances. But  I  had  never  travelled  on  three  Sundays 
running  before. 

Peard  Bay,  named  for  Beechey's  first  lieutenant 
George  Peard,  has  suffered  a  sea-change  into  Pearl  Bay 
in  the  speech  of  the  coast.  Indeed  an  old  whaler  at 
Point  Barrow  insisted  most  positively  that  ** Pearl"  was 
its  name,  and  produced  a  chart  in  evidence.  I  was  able 
to  convince  him  with  a  lens  that  the  belly  of  the  *'d" 
becoming  mixed  with  one  of  the  Sea-Horse  Islands  that 
lie  in  the  bay,  gave  the  letter  the  appearance  of  an 
*4,"  but  on  another  chart,  evidently  copied  from  the 
first,  the  name  stands  ''Pearl.'*  So  much  may  a  care- 
less engraver  be  responsible  for.  I  was  prepared  to 
find  that  all  the  cheap,  commercial  maps  had  fallen 
into  the  error,  but  rather  disgusted  that  the  map  of 
Alaska  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britrninica  was  of  the  same 
company.  The  maps,  I  think,  are  the  poorest  fea- 
ture of  that  indispensable  work  of  reference.  The 
article  on  Alaska  is  admirable;  the  map  is  contempt- 
ible. 

We  saw  little  of  the  bay  and  nothing  of  the  Sea-Horse 
Islands.  It  must  be  due  to  the  proverbial  unfamiliarity 
of  seafaring  men  with  horses  that  the  walrus  was  ever  so 
known.  One  feels  that  the  surprise  of  the  child  in  Oliver 
Herford's  delightful  Primer  of  Natural  History  at  the 
application  of  the  name  "horse"  to  the  hippopotamus 
would  be  quite  as  much  justified  by  its  application  to  the 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  203 

walrus:  ''Why  they  call  that  thing  a  horse,  that's  what 
is  Greek  to  me ! " 

These  low  islands,  mere  dislocated  pieces  of  sandbar, 
were  the  resort  of  herds  of  walrus  in  Beechey's  time  and 
are  the  resort  of  walrus  yet — though  the  numbers  are 
greatly  diminished  by  the  reckless  commercial  slaughter 
of  them  from  schooners.  It  will  be  quite  in  line  with  our 
usual  policy  to  take  some  measure  for  the  protection  of 
the  walrus  when  it  is  on  the  point  of  extermination;  to 
lock  the  stable  door  when  the  sea-horse  is  stolen,  so  to 
speak. 

A  rapid  fall  of  the  temperature  to  30°  below  zero  had 
brought  the  usual  accompaniment  of  fog.  The  moisture 
with  which  the  air  had  been  loaded  in  the  late  snowstorm 
and  comparative  high  temperature,  was  now  condensing 
and  would  presently  be  deposited  as  hoar  frost;  then  the 
air  would  clear.  Meanwhile  we  took  a  course  by  compass 
across  the  bay,  hoping  to  strike  the  shore  near  the  spot 
where  the  igloo  lay.  A  keen  light  air  that  sprang  up  from 
the  east  helped  to  keep  our  course,  and  to  inflame  our  sore 
noses  that  had  begun  to  heal  at  Wainwright.  For  seven 
hours  or  so  we  travelled  across  the  snow-covered  ice  of 
the  bay,  seeing  nothing  but  our  immediate  surroundings, 
and  all  that  time  I  was  anxious  lest  we  make  a  bad  land- 
fall and  miss  our  one  possible  lodging,  but  shortly  before 
it  grew  dark  the  fog  lifted — or  more  properly  fell — and 
we  spied  a  distant  wisp  of  smoke  and  knew  that  we  were 
safe.  The  place  rejoiced  in  the  name  Dit-jin-i-shiir,  as 
nearly  as  I  could  write  the  sounds,  and  I  suppose  if  there 
were  an  Eskimo  house  agent  he  might  describe  it  as  a 
pleasant  detached  villa  residence,  with  sandy  soil,  a 
marine  aspect  and  bracing  air.  Such  as  it  was  we  were 
exceedingly  glad  to  reach  it,  and  to  know  that  with  good 
fortune  one  more  long  day's  run  would  take  us  to  Point 
Barrow.  There  were  some  unusually  attractive  children 
at  this  igloo,  and  the  five-pound  sack  of  toffee  I  had 
brought  from  Point  Hope  just  lasted  to  give  them  a  piece 
all  round.    There  is  nothing  that  so  quickly  establishes 


204  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

friendly  relations  as  to  fill  the  mouths  of  these  shy,  pretty 
children  with  sweetstuff.  It  is  a  treat  to  them  the  more 
appreciated  on  account  of  its  rarity,  and  to  the  giver 
on  account  of  its  appreciation.  I  had  rather  be  without 
almost  anything  else  on  my  travels  than  candy  for  the 
children. 

I  had  the  men  up  early  next  morning  and  we  were 
started  by  6.30  in  the  clear  weather  I  had  confidently 
expected.  Our  way  lay  wholly  along  the  beach,  with 
high  mud  cliffs  rising  sometimes  to  fifty  or  sixty  feet 
all  the  way,  broken  here  and  there  by  gullies  and  clefts, 
making  this  stretch  of  coast  very  distinctive  after  the 
level  shore  we  had  so  long  traversed.  The  surface  was 
not  good,  being  mainly  new  ice  encrusted  with  salt-frost, 
difiicult  to  walk  upon  and  ruinous  to  one 's  deerskin  boots, 
and  making  much  friction  for  our  sled-runners.  After 
seven  hours  of  it  we  reached  an  igloo  at  a  point  some- 
what higher  than  the  general  line  of  bluffs,  called  ' '  Skull 
Cliff" — I  heard  why  but  made  no  note  of  it  and  have 
forgotten — and  here  we  were  glad  to  stop  and  eat  and  get 
warm,  for  we  had  all  suffered  with  cold  hands  despite 
thick  woollen  gloves  and  heavy  fur  mitts.  I  have  never 
been  able  to  tell  why  hands  are  so  much  harder  to  keep 
warm  on  some  days  than  on  others  of  similar  tempera- 
ture. An  hour  here  and  we  went  some  eight  or  nine 
miles  further  to  another  igloo,  reached  in  both  cases  by 
ascending  a  gully  to  the  tableland  of  the  bluff,  and  again 
were  glad  to  get  warm  and  consume  tea  and  biscuit. 
Leaving  this  dwelling  at  4.30,  we  ran  for  four  hours  with- 
out stop,  having  sometimes  to  go  out  on  the  sea-ice  to 
avoid  water  from  the  tidal  cracks,  and  at  8.30  we  reached 
Cape  Smythe,  where  the  village  of  Barrow  is  situated, 
some  ten  miles  south  of  the  most  northerly  point  of  the 
coast,  which  is  the  actual  Point  Barrow. 

All  day  we  had  been  following  the  course  of  the  Blos- 
som's barge,  which,  under  her  master,  Thomas  Elson,  and 
the  "admiralty  mate,"  William  Smythe,  discovered  and 
mapped  this  coast  from  the  point  of  Peard  Bay  (Point 


POINT  HOPE  TO  POINT  BARROW  205 

Franklin)  to  Point  Barrow.  Smythe  I  found  shortened 
into  Smith,  and  Elson  clean  forgotten.  But  both  deserve 
honourable  remembrance,  for  it  was  a  dangerous  service 
creditably  performed,  and  to  Smythe  are  due  the  excel- 
lent sketches  and  line  drawings  that  embellish  Beechey's 
book. 

Dark  as  it  was,  the  whole  population  turned  out  to 
escort  us  the  length  of  the  village  and  beyond,  to  Mr. 
Charles  Brower's  establishment — the  **Cape  Smythe 
Whaling  and  Trading  Company" — and  here  we  were 
most  cordially  received.  Had  I  been  alone  I  should 
have  taken  up  my  abode  at  the  mission,  to  which  I  had 
been  most  cordially  invited,  but  I  knew  that  accommoda- 
tions there  were  limited  and  I  wished  neither  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  Walter  nor  to  inconvenience  hospitable  peo- 
ple, while  at  Mr.  Brower's  spacious  quarters  there  was 
plenty  of  room  for  both  of  us. 

So  here  on  the  25th  February  we  had  safely  finished 
the  second  grand  stage  of  our  long  journey,  at  the  north- 
erly extreme  of  Alaska,  and  here  we  sat  down  for  two 
weeks'  rest  and  refreshment  and  acquaintance. 


y 

POINT  BAREOW 


V 

POINT  BARROW 

The  native  settlement  at  this  place  consists  of  two  vil- 
lages, a  large  one,  Utkiavik,  at  Cape  Smythe  where  the 
post-office  of  "Barrow"  is  situated,  and  a  smaller  one  ten 
miles  away  at  the  actual  Point  Barrow,  called  Niiwuk. 
Both  villages  were  in  existence  when  Elson,  the  first 
white  man  in  these  parts,  made  his  visit,  but  the  Cape 
Smythe  village  grew  much  the  larger  by  the  centering  of 
the  whaling  enterprise,  and  the  establishment  of  the 
school  and  mission  in  1890,  and  so  continues. 

By  the  school  statistics  the  artificial  settlement  at 
Noorvik  on  the  Kobuk  river  has  a  population  of  403 
against  354  at  Barrow,  but  with  the  addition  of  the  people 
at  Nuwuk  the  Point  Barrow  Eskimos  are  more  numerous 
than  at  any  other  place  on  the  Alaskan  coast,  or,  indeed, 
on  the  Ajnerican  continent.  The  white  men  at  Point 
Barrow  make  claim  that  it  is  the  most  northerly  point 
of  the  continent,  and  the  largest  Eskimo  village  with  the 
most  northerly  school  and  post-office  in  the  world.  It  is 
indeed  the  most  northerly  inhabited  point  of  the 
continent,  but  not  the  most  northerly  point,  since  the 
Murchison  promontory  of  the  peninsula  of  Boothia  Felix, 
1,500  miles  to  the  eastward,  touches  the  72nd  parallel, 
whereas  the  latitude  of  Point  Barrow  is  generally  given 
at  71°  25',  some  forty  miles  further  south.  And  I  am 
afraid  it  must  yield  the  distinction  of  the  largest 
Eskimo  village  with  the  most  northerly  school  and  post- 
office  to  Upernavik  in  Greenland,  which  is  more  than  a 
degree  of  latitude  further  north  and  is  credited  with  a 
population  exceeding  900,  with  church  and  school,  and, 
surely,  post-office.  It  must  have  a  post-office,  since  0. 
Henry  in  one  of  his  stories  says  he  knows  an  Eskimo  at 
Upernavik  who  sends  to  Cincinnati  for  his  neckties. 

200 


210  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

So  Point  Barrow  must  rest  content  that  it  is  the  most 
northerly  point  of  Alaska,  the  most  northerly  inhabited 
point,  with  the  most  northerly  post-office  and  the  largest 
Eskimo  population,  on  the  continent.  It  is,  indeed,  far 
enough  north  for  any  white  man's  permanent  residence. 
The  sun  is  absent  in  the  winter  for  two  full  months — 
from  the  21st  November  to  the  21st  January,  which  of 
course  does  not  mean  that  daylight  is  totally  absent,  as 
some  seem  to  think,  but  only  that  the  sun  is  not  seen. 
Conversely,  in  summer  he  does  not  leave  the  sky  for  two 
full  months  and  there  is  daylight  all  night  for  almost  two 
months  more. 

To  most  residents  in  these  latitudes  I  think  the  per- 
petual sunshine  is  more  trying  than  the  darkness,  for 
there  are  always  three  or  four  hours'  daylight  on  the 
darkest  day,  but  there  is  no  escape  from  the  glare  of  the 
sun,  no  kindly  decent  gloom  for  the  hours  of  repose.  I 
find  my  nerves  getting  on  edge  and  my  sleep  brief  and 
broken  at  the  time  of  the  summer  solstice,  and  I  pray 
the  poet's  prayer,  as  it  cannot  be  as  fervently  prayed  in 
lower  latitudes: 

"Come,  blessed  darkness,  come  and  bring  thy  balm 
For  eyes  grown  weary  of  the  garish  day. ' ' 

In  the  village  of  Barrow  the  church  is  the  most  con- 
spicuous building,  with  its  contiguous  ''manse"  or  par- 
sonage, occupied  by  Dr.  Spence  and  his  wife,  and  the 
schoolhouse  with  its  adjoined  teacher's  residence  is  the 
next.  Scattered  irregularly  about  are  the  native  dwell- 
ings, most  of  them  of  the  igloo  type,  but  some  breasting 
the  blasts  with  the  upstanding  "frame"  construction 
that  shows  more  valour  than  discretion  in  the  Arctic  re- 
gions and  appeals  to  an  Eskimo  in  proportion  to  his 
sophistication,  one  thinks ;  as  who  should  hold  that  things 
must  be  better  if  they  be  different. 

Half  a  mile  of  unoccupied  lower  ground  intervenes  to 
the  north  and  then,  cresting  a  rise,  are  the  barn-like 


POINT  BARROW  211 

warehouses  and  store  buildings  of  Mr.  Brower's  estab- 
lishment, with  some  more  native  igloos  dotted  about. 
In  the  palmy  days  of  whaling  these  great  warehouses 
were  crammed  with  merchandise,  and  it  was  boasted  that 
one  could  buy  here  almost  anything  that  one  could  ask 
for,  at  prices  no  higher  than  in  San  Francisco.  The  whal- 
ing ships  coming  up  empty  to  return  heavily  laden,  as 
they  hoped  and  as  commonly  happened — exactly  revers- 
ing the  condition  of  shipping  at  the  mouth  of  the  Yukon 
— could  bring  merchandise  at  small  cost,  and  the  whale- 
bone market  gave  such  a  rich  margin  of  profit  that  sup- 
plies sent  up  for  native  assistants  scarcely  cut  any 
figure. 

All  that  is  past;  for  the  last  few  years  there  has 
scarce  been  any  market  for  * '  bone ' '  at  all,  and  the  ware- 
houses at  New  Bedford,  in  Massachusetts,  the  head- 
quarters of  whaling,  are  said  to  be  stored  with  hundreds 
of  tons  for  which  there  is  no  sale.  The  last  French  cor- 
set house  that  used  whalebone  has  adopted  one  of  the 
substitutes,  and  horsewhips  have  become  obsolete  with 
horse  carriages.  Many  people  have  hoped  that  in  the 
development  of  the  aeroplane  some  use  for  this  material, 
which  combines  elasticity,  lightness  and  strength  in  a 
unique  degree,  would  arise,  but  it  has  not  yet  appeared, 
and  at  the  present  day,  as  in  the  earliest  days  of  the 
industry,  oil  is  a  more  profitable  product  of  whale-fishery 
than  bone.  But  whereas  in  those  early  days  it  was  the 
world's  major  illuminant,  it  is  now  only  a  minor  lubri- 
cant. I  have  heard  that,  taste  and  odour  removed,  it 
enters  into  that  delectable  compound  oleomargarine,  but 
I  do  not  know. 

Mr.  Charles  Brower  is  the  oldest,  and,  commercially, 
the  most  important  white  resident  of  the  Arctic  coast  of 
Alaska.  For  upwards  of  thirty  years  he  has  lived  in  this 
region,  most  of  the  time  at  this  place.  He  came  originally, 
I  understand,  in  connection  with  an  attempt  to  make 
the  Cape  Beaufort  coal  seams  available,  but  being  by 
calling  a  seafaring  man  he  soon  devoted  himself  to  whal- 


212  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ing  and  reaped  large  reward  during  the  heyday  of  the 
business.  He  had  reared  and  sent  to  the  States  for  edu- 
cation on*-  familj^  of  four  children,  and  was  proud  of 
a  son  i'  th3  £.rmy,  another  in  the  navy,  and  a  daughter 
a  K.u  Cross  nurse.  About  him  now  were  half-a-dozen 
by  a  second  wife,  sturdy,  wholesome-looking  half-breeds, 
the  bluod  mantling  their  cheeks  with  rosy  bloom.  The 
bitter  winds  of  this  coast  bring  the  colour  violently  to 
the  children's  faces,  and  some  of  the  mixed  race  that  I 
saw  had  the  richest  complexions  imaginable.  Mr.  Brow- 
er's  Bobby,  about  six  years  old,  was  my  special  pet,  an 
affectionate  little  chap  with  coal-black  hair  and  eyes, 
small  regular  features,  cheeks  like  poppies,  teeth  white 
and  regular  enough  for  a  dentifrice  advertisement — as 
pretty  as  any  picture — and  with  a  shy  manner  and  engag- 
ing smile  that  took  me  captive  at  once. 

Walter  and  I  slept  in  the  shop,  he  in  a  bunk  and  I  on 
the  broad  counter  with  a  mattress  to  put  under  my 
sleeping-bag,  and  when  all  the  others  were  retired  to 
their  quarters  we  had  the  spacious,  well-lit  chamber  to 
ourselves  with  quiet  and  leisure  for  our  studies ;  so  that 
I  know  not  where  else  we  could  have  been  so  conveniently 
lodged. 

Connected  with  the  establishment  as  cook  was  an  old 
shipmate  of  Mr.  Brower's,  Mr.  Fred  Hopson,  with  an- 
other batch  of  assorted  half-breed  children,  and  the  two 
families  lived  together  in  a  sort  of  patriarchal  plenty  and 
simplicity,  and  with  an  absence  of  bickering  that  was 
very  pleasant  and  unusual.  Fred  Hopson 's  most  promi- 
nent mark  was  a  carefully  cultivated  ferocity  that  did  not 
deceive  anyone  as  to  his  kind  and  indulgent  nature. 
When  the  children  came  trooping  in  from  school,  their 
appetites  sharpened  by  a  walk  of  half  a  mile,  perhaps 
against  a  blizzard-like  wind,  they  would  invade  the 
kitchen,  and  the  most  explosive  and  alarming  fee-fi-fo- 
fum  threats  and  growls  would  immediately  proceed 
therefrom.  ''Get  out  of  here,  you  young  wolves,  or  I'll 
kick  the  left  ear  right  off  you ! "    * '  Where 's  that  ramrod  ? 


POINT  BARROW  213 

— what  the  dickens  did  Charley  do  with  that  ramrod  1" 
But  left  ears  seemed  as  numerous  as  right  oi:ies  and  I  do 
not  believe  that  the  ramrod  was  ever  found.  The  chil- 
dren, quite  undismayed,  issued  forth  munching  blabs  of 
cake  or  sections  of  pie,  or,  at  least,  hunks  of  bread  and 
jam. 

Mr.  Brower  was  a  quiet,  judicious,  dispassionate  man, 
capable  and  intelligent,  the  best  informed  man  on  all 
Arctic  matters  that  I  found  on  this  coast;  one  of  the  very 
few  with  any  knowledge  of  its  history  or  more  than  a 
momentary  interest  therein.  He  had  met  every  man  of 
note,  navigator,  explorer,  traveller,  scientist,  who  had 
visited  these  parts  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
and,  with  the  open-handed  hospitality  of  the  Arctic,  had 
entertained  most  of  them.  I  found  him  a  mine  of  in- 
formation, a  mine  that  I  dug  in  a  good  deal  during  those 
two  weeks  and  that  I  sit  here  today  wishing  I  had  dug  in 
more.  He  knew  the  inside  history  of  the  recent  expedi- 
tions— sometimes  differing  widely  from  their  outside  his- 
tory— and  while  I  found  his  estimates  of  individuals  not 
always  in  accord  with  the  popular  valuation,  there  was  a 
broad  experienced  humanity  about  him  that  prevented 
them  from  becoming  uncharitable. 

Long  residence  among  the  natives,  employing  them, 
trading  with  them,  marrying  amongst  them,  had  given 
his  observant  mind  a  penetrating  insight  into  their  char- 
acter, and  into  their  manners  and  customs,  past  and 
present  (for  they  have  changed  much  in  his  time),  which, 
while  lacking  in  the  detached,  scientific,  note-book-and- 
tape-measure  minuteness  of  Mr.  Stefansson's  ethnologi- 
cal studies,  as,  I  am  very  sure,  his  acquaintance  with  the 
Eskimo  language  lacked  Mr.  Stefansson's  enthusiastic 
philological  exactitude,  yet  excelled  the  attainments  in 
these  directions  of  any  other  man  I  have  ever  met,  unless 
it  were  Bishop  Stringer  or  Archdeacon  Whittaker  of  the 
Yukon  Territory — though  indeed  these  be  matters  of 
which  I  am  capable  only  of  a  superficial  judgment 
amounting  to  little  more  than  an  opinion.    He  had  gath- 


214  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ered  a  large  collection  of  old  native  weapons  and  imple- 
ments of  all  kinds,  the  *' artifacts"  of  the  archaelogist, 
which  he  had  reluctantly  parted  with  to  an  eager  pur- 
chasing agent  of  the  American  Museum  of  Natural 
History.  While  cherishing  no  delusions  about  the  Eski- 
mos, his  attitude  towards  them  was  entirely  kindly  and 
sympathetic.  During  my  stay  with  him  I  fell  into  his 
habit  of  a  daily  morning  walk  of  some  three  or  four 
miles  along  the  sandspit,  with  the  ocean  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  lagoon  on  the  other,  almost  whatever  the 
weather,  and  was  glad  of  this  opportunity  of  uninter- 
rupted conversation,  but  I  can  only  recall  one  day  when  it 
was  such  a  stroll  as  would  be  taken  anywhere  for  pleas- 
ure. There  was  almost  always  a  keen  wind,  coming  or 
going. 

Mr.  Brower  had  a  controversy  with  the  Bureau  of  Edu- 
cation over  the  policy  of  Eskimo  concentration  to  which 
it  seems  committed  perhaps  somewhat  bureaucratically 
at  this  place,  holding  that  there  were  too  many  people 
gathered  at  Point  Barrow  for  the  prosperity  of  the  com- 
munity; and  he  had  "outfitted"  a  number  of  men  with 
grub  that  they  might  take  their  families  and  go  far  off 
where  there  was  better  prospect  of  white  foxes  than  in 
the  overtrapped  neighbourhood  of  Point  Barrow.  Of 
course  he  was  the  agent  of  a  furrier's  house  and  it  was 
his  business  to  secure  furs,  but  there  is  little  now  besides 
furs  that  an  Eskimo  who  uses  "white  man's  grub"  can 
procure  to  trade  for  the  same.  Even  for  the  sealing,  the 
daily  bread-winning  of  the  Eskimos,  the  gathering  of 
many  people  at  one  place  is  not  favourable  for  a  plenti- 
ful provision  of  food,  and  the  problem  of  fuel,  always 
a  serious  one  in  an  Eskimo  community,  was  rendered 
more  pressing  by  a  large  population,  and  was  indeed 
more  pressing  at  Point  Barrow  than  at  any  other  place 
we  visited. 

While  there  was  this  friction  with  the  school,  I  found 
harmony  between  him  and  the  mission,  and  much  appre- 
ciation of  Dr.  Spence.    That  gentleman,  with  his  wife, 


POINT  BARROW  215 

did  us  the  honour  to  call  upon  us  on  the  night  of  our 
arrival,  and  had,  indeed,  expected  mo  as  their  guest.  I 
went  down  to  the  church  two  nights  later  and  addressed 
with  much  interest  the  largest  Eskimo  congregation  I 
had  ever  seen — some  300  people  gathered  at  the  mid-week 
prayer  meeting;  and  so  long  as  I  stayed  at  Point  Bar- 
row I  was  called  upon  to  speak  to  the  people  on  every 
occasion  of  their  assembling.  An  efficient  interpreter 
had  been  developed,  a  product  of  the  local  school,  now 
employed  with  much  advantage  as  an  assistant  therein, 
well  grounded  in  all  but  the  amenities  of  English — as  I 
have  remarked  of  the  school-training  before;  a  young 
married  man,  earnest  and  anxious,  to  whom  I  took  a  lik- 
ing and  to  whose  willing  usefulness  I  was  on  many  occa- 
sions indebted. 

A  form  of  service  had  been  translated  into  Eskimo 
with  a  selection  of  hymns,  and  save  for  the  Scripture 
reading  and  the  address,  which  were  interpreted,  the 
whole  exercises  were  in  the  vernacular  tongue.  There 
was  much  extempore  prayer,  now  one  in  the  body  of  the 
church  and  now  one  in  the  gallery  taking  up  the  burden 
of  petition,  sometimes  in  a  loud  voice  and  sometimes 
almost  inaudible;  alike  unintelligible  to  me,  of  course, 
but  alike,  I  make  no  doubt,  not  only  intelligible  but  ac- 
ceptable to  Him  to  Whom  it  was  addressed.  Unaccus- 
tomed to  public  extemporaneous  prayer,  I  was  perhaps 
the  more  touched  by  what  seemed  a  simple  spontaneous 
outpouring  of  piety,  and  that  first  impression  was  deep- 
ened as  I  grew  better  acquainted. 

Dr.  Spence  had  been  a  physician  all  his  life  and  was 
ordained  to  the  Presbyterian  ministry  only  on  coming  up 
to  take  charge  of  this  mission.  In  the  conduct  of  his  re- 
ligious work  I  judged  him  simple  and  sincere;  devout 
without  being  unctuous.  Unctuousness  there  was  at 
Point  Barrow,  even  down  to  Aaron's  beard  and  the  skirts 
of  his  clothing,  as  when  I  was  bidden  to  see,  in  the  fossil 
bones  of  extinct  monsters  lately  discovered,  evidence  of 
''what  a  beautiful  and  lovely  world  this  must  have  been 


216  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ere  sin  entered  in  to  blast  and  destroy,"  whereas — to  deal 
only  with  that  side  of  the  remark — it  is  well  known  that 
unless  the  paleontologists  have  greatly  erred  in  their 
reconstruction  of  these  creatures,  they  were,  on  the  whole, 
far  uglier  than  anything  that  is  permitted  to  walk  the 
earth  today ;  more  horrific  of  aspect  if  not  more  ferocious 
of  disposition.  The  imagination  must,  I  think,  be  unctu- 
ous that  can  kindle  at  the  bones  of  such  monsters  into 
such  fire. 

But  there  was  no  unctuousness  about  Dr.  Spence ;  if  I 
were  seeking  one  word  to  describe  his  quality  I  should 
call  it  "lactifluousness,"  for  I  have  rarely  seen  the  milk 
of  human  kindness  flow  more  copiously  and  more  gen- 
erally. We  are,  I  suppose,  always  disposed  to  like  those 
who  are  tolerant  of  our  weaknesses,  and  I  had  no  more 
than  settled  down  on  my  first  visit  to  the  manse  ere  I 
was  told  to  take  out  my  pipe  if  I  cared  to.  "We  know 
you  smoke  and  we  don't  mind  it  at  all. ' '  One  must  under- 
stand the  dead  set  against  tobacco  at  the  schoolhouses 
and  some  of  the  missions  of  this  coast,  the  furtive  way 
in  which  the  natives  indulge  in  it,  to  realize  the  extent 
of  this  charitable  good  nature.  It  was  almost  as  though 
a  Spanish  grandee  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  under  the 
very  eye  of  the  Inquisition,  had  said  to  a  visitor,  "We 
know  you  are  a  heretic,  but  go  ahead  and  hold  your  own 
worship;  we  don't  mind  a  little  thing  like  that!",  and  for 
all  I  know  Dr.  Spence  may  have  been  promptly  delated 
to  Fifth  Avenue  for  permitting  smoking  in  the  manse. 
King  James  I  and  his  famous  "Counterblast"  would 
find  themselves  much  at  home  at  Point  Barrow.  Having 
no  piety  of  my  own  to  boast  about,  as  Bishop  Wilmer 
used  to  say,  I  will  intrench  myself  behind  the  impreg- 
nable piety  of  William  Cowper,  who  wrote  (on  the  3rd 
June,  1783)  that  if  tobacco  were  not  known  in  the  golden 
age,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  golden  age,  and  that  this 
age  of  iron  or  lead  would  be  insupportable  without  it.  A 
man  must  be  judged  according  to  his  lights,  and  Cowper 's 
memory  should  not  be  unduly  blackened  for  this  remark 


POINT  BARROW  217 

even  by  the  most  violent  anti-tobacconist.  Else  what  will 
you  do  with  John  Wesley,  who  wrote  of  wine  that  it  is 
''one  of  the  noblest  cordials  in  nature"?  His  ''journal" 
has  a  good  index  and  anyone  who  wishes  can  place  the 
reference,  whereas  my  copy  of  Cowper's  Letters  has 
none.  There  was  never  in  the  world  a  more  pious  man 
than  Cowper,  but  several  new  sins  have  been  discovered 
since  his  day.  I  am  sorry  to  dig  up  such  scandalous  old 
sayings,  but  it  is  really  necessary  to  remind  some  people 
that  there  were  saints  before  Billy  Sunday,  however  dim 
their  halos  in  our  brighter  light. 

It  was  not  mere  tolerance  or  complaisance,  however, 
that  I  had  in  mind  in  speaking  of  Dr.  Spence  as  lactiflu- 
ous,  it  was  his  unchanging  attitude  of  sympathy  and  help- 
fulness to  all  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  His  gentle- 
ness with  the  natives  had  an  almost  feminine  quality, 
without  any  suggestion  of  effeminacy.  He  never  spoke 
loudly  nor  without  a  kindly  intonation,  never  betrayed 
the  slightest  impatience  at  the  most  unconscionable  wast- 
ing of  his  time,  never  failed  in  careful  consideration  for 
their  feelings,  and  always  sought  the  best  construction 
of  their  actions.  I  made  his  round  of  visits  with  him 
one  morning,  from  igloo  to  igloo,  where  his  sick  lay,  a 
long,  sad  list;  and  everywhere  his  coming  brought  not 
only  tender  ministrations  but  the  light  of  pleasure  in  eyes 
that  otherwise  showed  only  pain.  I  saw  an  old  bedridden 
woman  continually  caress  his  hand,  and  kiss  it  when  he 
said  good-bye.  Some  of  the  dwellings  were  large,  some 
very  small,  some  neat  and  clean,  some  dirty,  in  the  usual 
way  at  any  native  village — or  for  that  matter  at  any  gen- 
eral collection  of  human  habitations.  But  how  sorely 
there  was  need  of  some  proper  place  for  the  care  of  the 
sick !  of  nurses  to  supplement  the  physician !  In  the  dark, 
close  underground  dwellings  the  chance  of  recovery  from 
any  disease  is  surely  greatly  diminished,  and  although 
every  dwelling  we  entered  had  a  sheet-iron  stove,  and 
most  of  them  had  been  so  built  that  only  a  stove  would 
properly  warm  them,  in  not  one  of  them  was  any  heat 


218  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

save  from  a  seal-oil  lamp,  so  entirely  has  the  driftwood 
been  consumed  from  off  the  beaches  of  this  coast. 

Tuberculosis,  always  rife  at  native  villages,  seems 
more  common  here  than  anywhere  else.  I  have  read  that 
a  Dr.  H.  C.  Michie,  making  the  von  Piquet  test  (what- 
ever that  may  be)  on  nearly  all  the  children  at  the  Eskimo 
village  at  St.  Michael,  found  that  61.5  were  tuberculous,* 
and  Dr.  Spence  told  me  that  at  Point  Barrow  there  is 
scarcely  one  family  not  affected  by  it  in  some  member 
and  some  degree.  It  is  complicated  in  many  cases  with 
syphilis ;  one  case  I  saw  had  painful  suppurating  lesions 
as  a  result  of  inherited  syphilis,  and  another,  a  young 
man,  was  losing  his  sight  therefrom,  and  would.  Dr. 
Spence  said,  lose  it  entirely  beyond  any  possibility  of 
salvation.  He  was  patient  and  resigned,  but  it  was 
frightful  to  think  of  this  poor  boy  doomed  to  life-long 
blindness  through  no  fault  of  his  own.  What  an  awful 
responsibility  rests  upon  the  shoulders  of  those  whose 
lawless  passions  introduced  this  vile  disease  into  the 
Arctic  regions! 

I  have  never  seen  any  place  where  a  modern,  well- 
equipped  hospital  is  more  sorely  needed  than  at  Point 
Barrow,  and  immediately  upon  my  return  to  Fort  Yukon 
I  ventured  to  make  that  very  urgent  representation  to 
those  having  the  ultimate  charge  of  the  work.  It  was 
graciously  received,  and  I  am  encouraged  to  hope  that 
this  crying  need  will  presently  be  supplied.  I  hold  it 
very  much  to  the  credit  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  that 
they  have  so  long  maintained  a  physician  at  this  place. 
Strait  is  the  gate  and  narrow  is  the  way  of  the  medical 
missionary  in  the  Arctic,  and  few  there  be  that  find  it. 
Before  Dr.  Spence  was  Dr.  Marsh  for  many  years,  to 
whose  devotion  and  good  sense  Mr.  Stefansson  bears 
testimony — a  witness  who  will  not  be  accused  of  undue 
partiality  for  any  form  of  missionary  activity. 

My  chief  reflection  upon  the  Eskimo  situation  along 
this  whole  coast  is  that  the  health  of  the  natives  is  scan- 

*  American  Journal  of  the  Diseases  of  Children,  March,  1917. 


From  a  photcgraph  by  Fred  Ilopson. 

A  POINT  BARROW  MOTIIKR  AND  CHILD. 


POINT  BARROW  219 

dalously  neglected.  The  Danish  government  of  Green- 
land has  shown  a  far  more  kindly  care  for  the  Eskimo, 
and  is  rewarded  by  the  knowledge  that  they  are  increas- 
ing instead  of  diminishing  as  upon  our  coast.  The 
figures  that  have  been  sent  me  as  representing  the  growth 
of  population  in  Danish  West  Greenland,*  show  an  in- 
crease from  10,245  in  1890  to  11,790  in  1904,  and  every 
decade  preceding  1890  shows  its  corresponding  increase, 
save  from  1860  to  1870  when  there  was  doubtless  some 
epidemic  disease.  The  coast  is  divided  into  three  medical 
districts,  with  responsible  physicians  in  charge  and  ca- 
pable assistants  under  them,  and  I  have  been  informed, 
though  I  cannot  quote  authority  for  the  statement,  that 
every  village  of  any  size  at  all  has  medical  care  from 
the  government.  On  our  whole  Arctic  coast,  from  Kot- 
zebue  Sound  to  Point  Barrow,  Dr.  Spence  was  the  only 
physician  and  we  found  no  nurse  or  hospital  at  all. 

It  is  not  pleasant  to  make  such  comparisons  to  the  dis- 
advantage of  our  government.  I  do  not  think  I  am  lack- 
ing in  an  appreciation  of  what  has  been  done  for  our 
Eskimos ;  I  recognize  the  immense  benefit  that  the  intro- 
duction of  domesticated  reindeer  has  brought,  though 
to  my  mind  the  honour  for  that  far-sighted  beneficence 
is  almost  wholly  due  to  the  restless  energy  and  resource- 
fulness of  one  man;  the  government  itself  has  no  more 
than  the  credit  of  the  unjust  judge  who  yielded  to  the 
importunate  widow  because  of  her  importunities;  I 
recognize  the  earnest  and  successful  efforts  to  provide 
elementary  education — which  also  owe  not  only  their  in- 
ception but,  in  no  small  degree,  their  abiding  impulse  to 
the  same  large  heart  and  enthusiastic  mind;  yet  while 
making  full  acknowledgment  of  these  benefits  I  cannot 
acquit  the  government  of  the  almost  total  neglect  and 
disregard  of  the  health  of  the  Arctic  Eskimos. 

That  neglect — w^hich  is  not  confined  to  the  Eskimos  but 
applies  in  general  to  the  nativCiS  of  Alaska — is  not  so 

*  I  am  indebted  to  the  librarian  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  for 
them. 


220  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

much  the  fault  of  individuals  as  it  is  the  fault  of  an  un- 
wieldy, inelastic,  unresponsive  system,  which,  as  the  his- 
tory of  Alaska  abundantly  shows,  is  unequal  to  the  care 
of  remote,  unrepresented  dependencies.  There  was  no 
lack  of  knowledge  of  conditions,  there  was  no  lack  of 
continual  urging  of  needs;  they  were  known  and  recog- 
nized. I  have  recently  read  a  file  of  nearly  all  the 
annual  reports  of  the  governors  of  Alaska,  and  I  feel  as 
Gibbon  felt  when  he  closed  the  chronicles  of  Gregory  of 
Tours,  '*I  have  tediously  acquired,  by  a  painful  perusal, 
the  right  of  pronouncing  this  unfavourable  sentence." 

Thirty-five  years  ago  the  first  governor  of  Alaska 
wrote  strongly  and  feelingly  of  the  need  of  medical  at- 
tention to  the  natives ;  last  year  the  ninth  governor  took 
up  vigorously  the  same  refrain.  Said  Governor  Swine- 
ford  in  1886,  "I  see  them  dying  almost  daily  for  the  want 
of  medical  care  which,  it  seems  to  me,  a  humane  govern- 
ment ought  not  to  hesitate  to  provide  for  them.  Shall  it 
continue  to  be  said  that  our  free  and  enlightened  gov- 
ernment is  less  regardful  of  the  needs  of  this  helpless, 
suffering  people  than  was  despotic  Russia?"  Said  Gov- 
ernor Strong  (report  of  1917),  ''An  analysis  of  the  situa- 
tion causes  one  almost  to  agree  with  the  pessimistic  al- 
ternative that  Congress  should  either  attend  to  the  needs 
of  the  natives  in  a  comprehensive  and  sufficient  manner 
or  else  do  nothing  at  all  and  allow  the  race  to  die  out 
as  quickly  as  possible." 

I  am  of  opinion  that  so  far  as  the  producing  of  any 
effect  is  concerned,  these  copious  annual  reports  might 
as  well  have  been  corked  up  in  bottles  and  solemnly  cast 
into  the  sea.  They  would  have  had  quite  as  much  influ- 
ence in  the  bellies  of  sharks  and  whales  as  in  their  re- 
spective pigeon-holes  at  Washington. 

All  the  care  of  the  health  of  the  natives  of  the  interior 
along  1,500  miles  of  the  Yukon  and  along  all  its  great 
tributaries  (beyond  a  physician  and  a  makeshift  hos- 
pital at  Nulato)  is  at  the  charge  of  the  Episcopal  and 
Roman  Catholic  missions,  which  are  forced  to  supply 


POINT  BARKOW  221 

the  deficiencies  of  the  government.  The  only  physician 
on  the  Arctic  coast  is  a  missionary  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church.  It  is  true  that  the  school-teachers  everywhere 
are  supplied  with  a  few  drugs  and  bandages ;  it  is  true 
that  the  army-post  surgeons  at  Tanana  and  St.  Michael 
out  of  sheer  humanity  do  not  refuse  their  services  to  the 
natives  in  their  vicinity.  But  drugs  in  the  hands  of 
teachers  wholly  untrained  in  medicine  are  almost  as  likely 
to  do  harm  as  good,  and  the  post  surgeons  commonly 
have  their  hands  full  with  their  military  duties. 

I  have  not  taken  credit  for  half  of  my  *' painful  peru- 
sal"; a  file  equally  long  of  school  reports  and  ''special 
agent"  reports  was  included,  and  I  could  quote  scores 
of  passages  similar  to  those  I  have  quoted,  were  I  indif- 
ferent to  the  tedium  of  my  readers.  But  I  am  glad  to 
have  fortified  myself  with  this  disinterested  lay  testi- 
mony, well  knowing  that  in  some  unintelligent  yet  not 
uninfluential  quarters  mere  missionary  testimony  is  heav- 
ily discounted. 

The  situation  at  Point  Barrow  with  regard  to  the  coal 
measures  of  Wainwright  Inlet  is  much  the  same  as  that 
of  Point  Hope  to  the  coal  measures  between  Cape  Lis- 
burne  and  Cape  Beaufort;  the  coal  is  abundant  but  un- 
available. Along  the  intervening  coast  is  no  place  where 
a  boat  can  take  shelter  from  the  sudden  storms  to  which 
the  region  is  subject.  Peard  Bay  is  quite  open  and  un- 
protected; ''Eefuge  Inlet"  is  no  refuge  at  all.  The  only 
recourse  of  a  vessel  caught  on  a  lee  shore  in  these  parts 
is  to  beat  out  to  sea;  an  oomiak  laden  with  coal  is  not 
suited  to  such  nautical  manoeuvre  and  is  at  once  in 
peril ;  and,  while  some  little  coal  is  in  some  seasons  thus 
procured,  the  main  supply  for  the  mission  and  the  school 
and  the  store  comes  from  the  Pacific  coast  in  ships. 

There  was  almost  a  fuel  famine  at  Point  Barrow  dur- 
ing this  winter.  The  store,  I  judge,  never  lacks.  Com- 
merce is  likely  to  look  well  after  its  own.  The  school 
did  not  seem  to  be  inadequately  provided.  But  the  mis- 
sion was  very  ill  supplied  and  the  native  population  al- 


222  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

most  entirely  without.  The  large,  barn-like  church  was 
always  wretchedly  cold ;  from  time  to  time  during  service 
the  doors  of  the  stoves  would  be  opened  by  attendants 
and  lumps  of  seal  or  whale  blubber  thrust  in  to  eke  out 
the  coal,  but  the  effect  they  produced  was  limited  to 
their  close  vicinity.  All  the  congregation  wore  their  out- 
door attire,  but  for  Sunday  they  had  the  pretty  habit  of 
wearing  clean,  white,  cotton  "snowshirts"  over  all,  the 
sleeves  and  the  bottom  edged  with  an  embroidery  of 
narrow  braid  in  a  native  pattern.  The  effect  was  like 
that  of  a  gathering  of  old-fashioned  English  peasants 
in  smock  frocks.  When  I  preached,  instead  of  the  robes 
to  which  I  am  accustomed,  I  was  vested  in  fur  boots  and 
fur  artigi,  with  even  its  fur  hood  pulled  up.  I  suppose, 
had  our  Lord  and  His  apostles  lived  in  the  Arctic  regions 
instead  of  Syria,  some  conventionalized  form  of  fur  gar- 
ments would  have  descended  to  the  historic  ministry 
instead  of  the  flowing  linens  of  the  East.  When  the 
building  grew  a  little  warmer,  chiefly  by  the  aggregated 
animal  heat  of  so  many  people,  it  began  to  be  odoriferous 
of  hides  and  oil,  and  by  the  time  the  service  was  done 
one's  clothing  had  become  burdensome  and  the  prospect 
of  fresh  air  welcome,  though  one's  feet  were  always  cold. 
The  heating  of  such  a  spacious  and  lofty  overground 
structure  must  always  be  extravagant  of  fuel,  and  once 
again  I  was  impressed  with  the  ineligibility  of  such  archi- 
tecture in  these  parts.  Why  should  precisely  the  same 
sort  of  church  be  built  in  the  barren  regions  of  cold, 
continually  scourged  by  bitter  winds,  as  would  be  built 
amongst  the  palm  groves  of  Florida!  Am  I  unreason- 
able in  thinking  that  a  reasonable  question?  There  is  a 
certain  staring  incongruity  in  obtruding  Gothic  stone 
churches  upon  the  distinctive  architecture  of  China,  and 
I  have  always  felt  that  a  pagoda-like  structure  sur- 
mounted by  the  cross  would  appeal  more,  not  only  to 
a  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  but  also  to  a  sense  of  the 
universal  adaptability  of  the  Christian  religion  and  its 
destined  universal  dominance,  than  any  building  of  ex- 


POINT  BARROW  223 

otic  style;  although  the  Gothic  is  so  distinctively  Chris- 
tian that  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  its  transplan- 
tation. But  there  is  nothing  beautiful  or  characteristic 
or  that  appeals  to  any  feeling  for  evangelistic  continuity 
in  these  dreadful  barn-like  structures.  What  is  the  rea- 
son, then,  that  they  are  bodily  transplanted  to  the  Arctic 
regions?  It  does  not  lie  in  lack  of  knowledge,  in  igno- 
rance of  the  facts,  for  men  of  long  residence  build  them ; 
it  can  be  due  only  to  a  lack  of  that ' '  imaginative  sense  of 
fact,"  spoken  of  by  Pater  the  prophet,  which  turns 
knowledge  into  power. 

Once  again  I  wished  that  it  had  fallen  to  my  lot  to 
attempt  the  adaptation  of  the  Eskimo  style  to  ecclesias- 
tical purposes.  The  trees  borne  hither  on  the  waves  all 
the  way  from  the  Yukon  river  (for  thence,  as  they  told 
me,  most  of  them  come),  with  which  the  beaches  used  to 
be  lined  would  have  made  beams  for  my  half -underground 
chamber;  the  massive  jawbones  of  whales,  that  so  long 
defy  decay,  I  thought  might  have  made  pendentives  for 
my  domes.  I  saw  lustrous  mosaic  skylights  of  deftly- 
pieced  integument,  tinted  with  colours  from  seaweed  and 
moss,  from  berries  and  earths,  cunningly  blended  into 
Christian  emblems,  to  which  their  soft  translucence 
would  give  themselves  better  than  glass.  I  saw  low 
walls  hung  with  a  diaper  of  tanned  skins,  semed  with 
similar  signs  by  Eskimo  needles,  the  cleverest  in  the 
world  in  the  working  of  fur,  and  bordered  with  their 
own  native  designs,  cheeky  or  counter-cheeky,  chevrony, 
paly  or  pily,  vair  or  counter-vair,  exactly  as  the  heralds 
used,  long  ago,  when  such  terms  were  commonplace  to 
all  who  could  read.  Many  well-kept  seal-oil  lamps  of 
native  soapstone,  ranged  regularly  along  the  walls, 
perhaps  held  in  sconces  of  beaten  copper  brought 
from  Coronation  Gulf,  each  with  its  crouching  old 
woman  attendant,  would  suffice  for  light  and  even  for 
warmth. 

Not  only  would  my  temple  be  warmer  and  more  com- 
modious, more  easily  purged  of  foul  air  and  provided 


224  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

with  fresh,  but,  as  I  conceived  it,  would  not  lack  elements 
of  modest  native  beauty,  would  not  lack  some  little  hy- 
perborean glimmer  from  every  one  of  the  Seven  Lamps 
of  Architecture.  It  would  have,  at  any  rate,  the  funda- 
mental dignity  of  fitness;  over  it  the  wildest  storms 
would  pass  harmlessly;  from  it  the  severest  cold  would 
be  easily  repelled.  That  was  my  vision ;  but  on  the  other 
hand  I  might  have  spent  a  lot  of  money  and  made  a  sad 
mess  of  it.  Has  the  gift  of  the  imagination  been  denied 
to  all  them  that  occupy  their  business  on  the  Arctic  coast, 
or  has  it  been  superabundantly  indulged  by  one  who 
merely  visited  them? 

It  was  the  custom  to  hold  a  weekly  social  gathering 
of  the  white  residents,  to  which  I  was  invited.  All  told, 
there  were  eight  white  persons  living  here  this  winter, 
and  Walter  and  I  made  ten;  not  a  large  assembly,  yet 
quite  large  enough  for  the  little  sitting-room,  and  too 
large  when  there  is  no  attempt  to  organize  entertain- 
ment. If,  like  Dame  Ingoldsby,  ''dance  and  song"  you 
''consider  quite  wrong,"  "feast  and  revel,  mere  snares 
of  the  devil,"  and  cards  be  out  of  the  question,  there  is 
nothing  left  but  conversation,  and  unless  there  be  some- 
one with  a  gift  that  way  the  tiling  is  likely  to  flag.  Point 
Barrow  is  not  one  of  those  melodramatic  places  that 
Lewis  Carroll  speaks  of, 

"Where  life  becomes  a  spasm 
And  history  a  whiz," 

and  all  local  topics  of  talk  are  soon  well  worn.  As  to 
the  war  we  were  of  one  mind,  and  the  news  was  gloomy; 
nor  was  there  any  amateur  strategist  amongst  us.  Last 
year's  flaw  whaling  had  been  bad;  we  all  hoped  that  this 
year's — the  season  for  which  approached — would  be  bet- 
ter; the  weather  had  been  somewhat  unusally  stormy 
this  winter,  though  perhaps  not  remarkably  so ;  the  rein- 
deer herds  had  done  fairly  well,  but  the  increase  was 
not  as  great  as  other  places  reported;  the  fox-trapping 


POINT  BARROW  225 

had  promised  very  well  around  Christmas,  but  now  had 
greatly  fallen  off,  and  the  season  was  at  hand  for  its 
ending.  The  folly  of  closing  trapping  on  the  15th 
March,  when  the  fur  is  prime  for  a  full  month  or  six 
weeks  later,  merely  because  the  season  is  earlier  in 
southern  Alaska,  was  commented  on  and  made  an  im- 
pression on  me  (which  bore  fruit  in  a  representation  to 
the  governor,  which  bore  fruit  in  a  change  of  the  regu- 
lation, so  that  trapping  is  legal  on  this  coast  now  until 
the  15th  April). 

These  matters  exhausted  it  was  hard  to  revive  inter- 
est. I  had  persuaded  Mr.  Brower  to  come,  who  for  some 
time  had  disused  these  occasions,  but  I  could  not  make 
him  talk.  There  was  constraint  and  self-consciousness, 
and  three  of  those  present,  I  know,  missed  their  evening 
pipes.  They  do  better,  I  am  convinced,  at  Fort  Yukon, 
where,  it  is  true,  there  is  almost  twice  the  white  popula- 
tion in  some  winters,  and  where  once  a  week  they  gather 
for  whist.  I  am  never  there  myself  any  great  part  of 
the  winter,  and  indeed  have  neither  leisure  nor  inclina- 
tion for  cards.  For  twenty-five  years  there  has  never 
been  a  time  when  more  books  were  not  crying  out  to  be 
read  than  my  scanty  leisure  could  compass.  Even  now, 
as  I  sat  looking  at  the  assembled  company,  seeking  mod- 
estly, as  became  a  guest,  and  not  very  successfully,  from 
time  to  time  to  open  some  fresh  conversational  vista, 
was  there  not  the  Life  of  Sheldon  Jackson  that  Dr. 
Spence  had  lent  me  (and  in  my  isolation  in  the  north 
I  had  not  so  much  as  heard  that  there  was  a  life  of  Shel- 
don Jackson),  was  there  not  Bartlett's  Last  Voyage  of 
the  Karluk  that  I  had  found  at  Mr.  Brower 's  (and  I  on 
my  way,  as  it  turned  out,  to  meet  one  of  the  survivors 
of  that  very  disaster), — ^not  merely  crying  but  importu- 
nately clamouring  to  be  read  while  yet  there  was  time! 
But  for  a  small,  very  mixed,  gathering,  without  main 
interests  in  common,  I  think  that  perhaps  cards  afford 
the  best  basis  on  which  to  build  that  social  intercourse 
which  is  desirable  and  valuable  for  all  parties  concerned 


226  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

at  these  remote  outposts  of  civilized  life.  I  know  the 
difficulty,  and  I  know  that  it  is  more  apparent  than  real. 
The  natives  readily  acquire  card  games  and  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  keep  them  from  gambling;  but  gambling  is  prac- 
tised in  a  score  of  ways  without  the  aid  of  cards,  and 
it  seems  a  mistake  to  transfer  the  odium  from  the  prac- 
tice to  the  pasteboard. 

At  last  we  seemed  to  have  exhausted  our  resources 
altogether  and  we  sat  and  looked  at  one  another.  There 
came  into  my  perverse  mind  the  recollection  of  a  silly 
suppressed  stanza  from  '^ Peter  Bell"  (from  which  a 
good  many  more  might  have  been  suppressed  without 
loss),  ''Is  it  a  party  in  a  parlour?  All  silent  and 
all  .  .  .  " — but  I  will  not  finish  the  line,  for  the  finish 
has  no  more  relation  to  the  scene  than  the  stanza  to  the 
poem.  It  was,  Mr.  Wordsworth,  for  no  small  part  of  the 
evening,  "a  party  in  a  parlour,  all  silent."  The  refresh- 
ments made  a  welcome  diversion,  though  even  then  so 
forced  was  the  gaiety  that  without  any  reflection  upon  the 
eatables  which  were  abundant  and  excellent  I  could  not 
help  recalling  the  occasion  when  a  certain  celebrated 
character  "took  up  that  moist  and  genial  viand  a  cap- 
tain's biscuit  and  said  'Let  us  be  merry.'  "  Yet  with 
these  people,  singly  or  in  couples,  I  had  had  pleasant  un- 
restrained intercourse.  It  was  a  case  of  the  mixing  of 
diverse  ingredients  without  some  one  reagent  that  would 
make  them  combine,  and  cards  constitute  the  simplest 
form  of  that  reagent  that  I  know  of.  I  hope  I  have  not 
seemed  unappreciative  or  critical  of  very  kindly  and 
gracious  hospitality.  There  is  nowhere  in  the  world,  I 
am  sure,  any  freer  or  more  generous  hospitality  than  in 
the  Arctic  regions. 

Walter  was  day  by  day  busily  engaged  upon  the  build- 
ing of  another  sled.  The  boy  had  planned  a  vehicle  that 
should  carry  little  besides  our  bedding  and  bags,  with 
runners  extending  behind  to  stand  upon  and  an  arch  or 
hoop  to  grasp  when  so  standing  instead  of  handlebars, 
a  smaller  reproduction  of  the  one  he  had  built  at  Point 


POINT  BARROW  227 

Hope;  designed  mainly  for  my  own  comfortable  prog- 
ress in  his  usual  kindly  and  thoughtful  way;  and  having 
procured  some  Siberian  hardwood  from  Mr.  Brower  for 
the  runners,  was  sawing  and  chiselling,  fitting  and  shap- 
ing, steaming  and  bending.  "A  natural-born  mechanic," 
said  Mr.  Brower;  yet  not  more  ''natural-born"  mechanic 
than  woodsman,  hunter,  dog-driver,  boatman,  mountain 
climber — natural-born  to  the  whole  range  of  outdoor 
proficiencies  so  that  it  was  not  possible  to  say  in  which 
of  them  he  most  greatly  excelled.  I  could  not  call  him 
a  naturalist,  because  his  knowledge  of  nature,  like  Gil- 
bert White's,  was  "unsystematic,"  but,  like  his,  it  was 
extensive  and  minute.  Mr.  Brower  had  lately  been  tell- 
ing us  of  a  most  remarkable  migration  and  wholesale 
self-destruction  of  lemmings,  which  took  place  in  1888 
during  the  flaw  whaling  season  (May),  when  millions 
of  these  little  creatures  came  out  of  the  interior,  passed 
out  upon  the  ice  until  the  sea  was  reached,  and  then 
plunged  into  the  water,  pursuing  the  same  direction,  and 
were  drowned  in  countless  multitudes.  For  miles  and 
miles  along  the  shore  they  floated  dead  in  great  wind- 
rows, cakes  of  ice  literally  covered  with  their  bodies 
drifted  to  and  fro,  and  he  said  there  were  many  millions 
of  them  drowned  in  three  days,  though  the  whole  period 
covered  a  couple  of  weeks.  I  was  greatly  interested  in 
this  thing,  not  only  on  account  of  its  remarkable  nature 
but  because  I  remembered  to  have  read  of  similar  inci- 
dents in  Norway  and  Sweden,  quite  as  inexplicable  and 
on  as  large  a  scale.  Then  Walter  spoke  up  and  said  he 
had  once  seen  hundreds  of  them  dro^vned  in  trying  to 
cross  the  Yukon.  Now  I  had  lived  thirteen  or  fourteen 
years  in  the  interior  of  Alaska  with  my  eyes  reasonably 
wide  open,  as  I  thought,  and  I  did  not  know  that  we  had 
such  creatures.  I  had  seen  several  varieties  of  shrews 
and  field-mice,  and  I  had  seen  rats  imported  by  steam- 
boats, at  many  points,  but  anything  corresponding  to 
the  lemming  I  had  not  seen.  For  aught  I  knew  of  its  nat- 
ural history  it  might  make  its  nest  under  sundials  and 


228  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

live  upon  cheese,  like  a  slithy  tove.  Walter,  however,  de- 
scribed them  as  five  or  six  inches  long,  with  rich  reddish- 
brown  fur,  round,  dumpy  heads,  little  black  eyes  and 
very  short  tails,  and  Mr.  Brower  recognized  the  descrip- 
tion. I  did  not  doubt ;  I  never  doubted  anything  "Walter 
said ;  but  I  wondered.  Last  summer,  when  we  had  taken 
the  Pelican  up  to  Eagle,  shortly  after  our  return  from 
this  journey,  and  were  on  our  way  to  visit  an  Indian 
camp  on  the  international  boundary  line  ten  miles  fur- 
ther up,  Walter  gave  a  quick  toot  to  the  horn  to  attract 
my  attention  and  when  I  entered  the  engine  room  pointed 
through  the  windows  to  the  water,  without  attempting 
to  say  a  word  amidst  the  noise  of  the  engine.  I  ran  out 
on  the  deck  and  saw  long  rows  of  floating  dead  bodies 
of  lemmings,  red-brown  fur,  round  dumpy  head,  short 
tail — just  as  he  had  described  them,  for  I  fished  one  out 
with  my  hand,  lying  on  my  belly  on  the  deck.  And  I 
still  wonder  how  it  came  that  I  never  saw  a  lemming 
before.  His  knowledge  of  all  our  birds  and  beasts  was 
similarly  close  and  accurate  and  he  would  have  made 
the  most  valuable  field-assistant  to  anyone  engaged  in 
a  description  of  Alaskan  fauna ;  with  the  necessary  train- 
ing he  could  have  undertaken  such  description  himself 
perhaps  better  than  any  other. 

It  was  here  that  I  began  to  suspect  that  Walter  wa& 
cherishing  a  purpose  of  offering  himself  for  the  war 
when  we  returned,  and  that  instead  of  going  out  to  col- 
lege he  would  go  out  to  fight,  were  he  still  needed.  When 
the  original  call  for  the  registration  of  men  within  the 
military  ages  was  made  in  Alaska  during  the  previous 
summer,  the  recording  officers  were  directed  to  exclude 
*'all  persons  of  whole  or  mixed  native  blood,  Indian, 
Eskimo  or  Aleut,"  and  I  know  that  his  pride  had  been 
hurt  by  the  discrimination.  Now  that  he  learned  that 
Mr.  Brewer's  two  sons  were  serving,  I  think  that  he 
resolved  to  enlist  when  he  had  the  opportunity.  He  had 
always  been  intensely  interested  in  aviation  and  read 
eagerly  all  that  came  in  his  way  about  it,  nor  was  he 


POINT  BARROW  229 

in  the  least  dismayed  by  a  very  striking  picture  of  an 
aviator  and  his  machine 


* '  Hurled  headlong,  flaming,  from  the  ethereal  height, 
With  horrid  ruin  and  combustion  down," 

like  Milton's  Satan,  which  a  lady  to  whom  he  confessed 
his  wish  produced  from  some  back  number  of  an  il- 
lustrated weekly  for  his  benefit.  Certainly  he  would  have 
been  a  valuable  recruit  amongst  the  bird-men.  Thor- 
oughly familiar  with  the  running  of  a  gas  engine,  he 
had  already  been  on  foot  higher  than,  at  that  time,  any 
aeroplane  had  soared  (for  I  do  not  think  the  record  had 
then  passed  20,000  feet),  and  had  been  without  fear  or 
suggestion  of  giddiness  upon  the  narrowest,  most  precipi- 
tous snow  ridges.  The  qualities  of  resourcefulness  and 
self-possession  he  had  so  often  displayed  in  exigencies 
on  land  would  have  had  only  more  conspicuous  display 
in  the  air,  and  the  instant,  unwavering  decision  which 
made  him  so  valuable  at  the  steering  wheel  or  with  the 
paddle  in  swift  water,  his  unerring  judgment  of  distance, 
his  keenness  of  vision,  his  complete  sang-froid,  all  these 
would  have  combined,  I  am  confident,  to  make  an  aviator 
who  would  only  need  experience  and  opportunity  to  be- 
come distinguished. 

I  had  already  begun  to  be  busy  with  arrangements  for 
our  further  travel  and  was  having  much  difficulty  in 
procuring  a  guide.  To  begin  with,  those  who  knew  the 
north  coast  were  few;  there  seems  no  travel  from  Point 
Barrow  beyond  the  mouth  of  the  Colville  river.  I  found 
one  stalwart,  personable  young  man  who,  though  with- 
out much  English,  knew  the  coast  and  was  willing  to  go, 
and  after  much  negotiation,  covenanted  with  him  as  to 
remuneration;  but  several  days  before  the  time  set  for 
our  departure,  he  reported  himself  unable  to  secure  the 
dogs  he  needed,  and  Mr.  Brower,  remarking  that  he  evi- 
dently had  ''cold  feet,"  advised  me  to  drop  him.  Then 
another  presented  himself,  but  the  report  as  to  his  ca- 


230  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

pacity  and  reliability  was  unsatisfactory  and  I  dropped 
him  too.  Then,  upon  Mr.  Brower's  recommendation,  I 
approached  a  half-breed  named  George  Leavitt,  son  of 
a  whaling  captain  who  used  these  parts  in  the  palmy 
days,  and  although  he  knew  the  coast  only  as  far  as 
Flaxman  Island,  and  that  mainly  in  the  summer  when 
he  had  several  times  gone  on  trading  cruises  for  Mr. 
Brower,  I  was  glad  to  close  with  him  for  the  trip.  He 
was  a  pleasant,  willing  fellow,  with  sufficient  English 
for  interpretation,  and  sufficiently  familiar  with  travel- 
ling conditions  that  we  might  safely  entrust  ourselves  to 
his  judgment  and  care ;  of  such  respectable  character  as 
to  be  one  of  the  elders  of  the  local  church. 

From  this  place  it  would  be  necessary  to  carry  all  the 
dog-feed  we  expected  to  use  until  we  reached  Herschel 
Island,  four  hundred  odd  miles  away,  the  greatest  dis- 
tance I  have  ever  had  to  transport  dog-feed.  George 
would  have  his  sled  and  seven  dogs,  which,  with  my  thir- 
teen^ made  twenty  dogs  to  feed,  and  that  meant  big  loads 
of  rice  and  whale  blubber,  the  only  available  food.  I 
wished  very  much  that  in  addition  to  sending  up  supplies 
for  ourselves,  I  had  sent  to  Point  Hope  and  Point  Bar- 
row 500  pounds  of  the  best  dried  king  salmon,  and  were 
I  contemplating  the  journey  again,  should  certainly  do 
so.  On  the  west  coast  the  supply  of  dog-feed  is  pre- 
carious; on  the  north  coast  there  is  none,  and  our  ex- 
perience was  to  prove  that  rice  and  blubber  make  poor 
food.  There  was  much  to  be  done  in  the  way  of  working 
out  the  minimum  weight  of  supplies  required,  in  the 
constructing  of  a  small  tent,  in  overhauling  our  whole 
equipment.  To  be  prepared  for  all  emergencies  Walter 
accompanied  one  of  the  men  on  a  seal  hunt  and  made  a 
pole  with  a  hook  at  the  end,  after  the  native  model,  for 
pulling  a  seal  that  has  been  shot  out  of  the  ice-hole.  I 
doubt  not,  had  we  been  reduced  to  such  extremity,  that 
he  would  have  been  able  to  subsist  the  party  after  reach- 
ing the  ice-edge,  which,  however,  is  sometimes  very  far 
from  the  land  on  the  north  coast. 


POINT  BARROW  231 

On  the  afternoon  of  one  of  the  Sundays  of  my  stay  at 
Point  Barrow  I  accompanied  Dr.  Spence  on  his  weekly 
visit  to  the  primitive  village  at  the  land's  end,  ten  or 
twelve  miles  away.  We  had  a  sled  and  team  apiece, 
and,  reclining  in  my  sleeping-bag,  I  had  the  novel  ex- 
perience of  being  hauled  along  ' '  like  a  sack  of  flour ' '  as 
Walter  expressed  it,  the  first  time  that  I  ever  so  trav- 
elled; and  the  feeling  of  helpless  confinement  was  any- 
thing but  agreeable.  Swift  dogs  covered  the  hard 
surface  in  about  an  hour  and  a  half,  and  we  found  the 
largest  house  in  the  village  literally  crammed  with  the 
whole  population  awaiting  the  usual  service.  I  counted 
them  three  times,  each  with  a  different  result,  they  were 
so  thick-set,  but  there  were  between  seventy  and  eighty 
people  in  an  ordinary  living  chamber,  the  air  very  foul 
and  oppressive.  Already  several  of  the  men  were  nude 
to  the  waist  and  soon  others  divested  themselves  of  their 
reindeer  snowshirts,  their  one  upper  garment,  until  a 
considerable  part  of  the  congregation  displayed  only 
bare  flesh.  When  I  had  gradually  removed  all  that  I 
could  remove  of  my  own  clothing,  as  the  heat  increased 
I  not  only  envied  the  greater  freedom  of  the  natives 
but  recalled  Sydney  Smith's  wish  that  he  could  take  off 
his  flesh  and  sit  in  his  bones.  One  prominent  man  gave 
a  ludicrous  illustration  of  the  combination  of  the  primi- 
tive and  the  highly  advanced :  nude  to  the  waist,  he  wore 
strapped  to  his  wrist  a  luminous-dial  watch.  Two  thou- 
sand years  ago  I  daresay  our  own  ancestors  divested 
themselves  of  all  apparel  when  it  grew  inconvenient,  with 
as  little  concern  as  the  Eskimos,  but  ten  years  ago  no 
one  in  the  world,  I  suppose,  possessed  a  radium-dial 
watch.  Let  me  say  again  that  there  was  not  to  my  mind 
the  slightest  suggestion  of  immodesty  about  this  expos- 
ure of  the  body;  there  was  evidently  no  self-conscious- 
ness about  it  at  all.  The  fur  shirt  was  removed  as  one 
removes  an  overcoat — only  there  happened  to  be  nothing 
underneath  it ;  and  I  have  little  sympathy  with  those  who 
would  blame  these  people  for  unburdening  themselves 


232  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

of  apparel  that  was  oppressive.  I  do  not  undervalue  the 
conventions  of  our  civilization,  but  I  see  no  sense  in  in- 
sisting upon  them  as  though  they  were  something  more 
than  conventions,  under  totally  different  circumstances. 
If  I  used  an  Eskimo  igloo  constantly  I  think  I  should 
drop  into  the  same  custom;  if  fur  were  my  only  wear 
I  am  sure  I  should. 

The  simple  devotion  which  these  people  exhibited 
again  impressed  me.  That  it  was  genuine  no  one  could 
doubt  when  there  was  nothing  to  gain  by  affectation. 
One  able  to  interpret  whom  I  questioned  afterwards  with 
regard  to  the  prayer  of  a  man  specially  fervent  in  spirit, 
told  me  that  he  had  spoken  of  the  comfort  and  happiness 
that  came  to  him  by  the  knowledge  that  his  sins  were 
forgiven  and  by  thinking  constantly  of  the  loving  pres- 
ence with  him  of  our  Heavenly  Father;  of  the  complete 
assurance  within  his  breast  of  that  presence ;  and  of  the 
change  in  his  whole  life  which  that  assurance  had 
brought.  As  it  was  given  to  me  there  was  nothing  ex- 
travagant or  unctuous  about  it,  nothing  that  did  not  ring 
true  as  his  own  words,  though  not  understood,  had  rung 
in  my  ears ;  nothing  dissimilar  to  the  experience  of  count- 
less thousands  of  all  races  in  all  ages  since  first  the  Gos- 
pel was  preached.  So  De  Long  felt  when  he  sailed  away 
from  this  very  coast;  so  he  felt  all  through  that  weary 
drift  in  the  ice;  all  through  that  terrible  journey  from 
his  foundered  ship  to  the  Lena  delta,  saving  others 
though  himself  he  could  not  save,  even  as  his  Master; 
so  Sir  John  Franklin  felt,  as  passages  in  his  journal 
testify;  so  Livingstone,  making  his  ''marvellous  explora- 
tions ' '  in  Africa ;  so  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  two  centuries  ago 
in  his  study;  so  Louis  Pasteur,  yesterday  in  his  labora- 
tory. And  my  controversy  with  my  agnostic  scientific 
friends  is  that  they  most  unscientifically  ignore  facts 
of  such  tremendous  force  and  universality,  and,  having 
swept  away  the  whole  spiritual  life  of  man,  are  con- 
sistently guilty  of  the  inconsistency  of  speaking  of  a  part 
in  terms  o*f  the  whole.    A  tag  of  legend  or  folk-lore  that 


POINT  BARROW  233 

should  appear  identically  and  independently  in  Ceylon, 
in  Africa,  in  Patagonia  and  in  Otaheite,  would  stir  the 
ethnological  world  to  its  depths,  and  would  be  lectured 
upon  from  Edinburgh  to  Melbourne,  but  religious  phe- 
nomena of  not  merely  far  greater  but  of  universal  va- 
lidity, identical  among  all  the  families  of  men,  and 
of  import  immeasurably  weightier,  are  contemptuously 
ignored. 

After  the  service  came  the  *' clinic,"  and  for  another 
hour  or  more  Dr.  Spence  was  examining  patients  and 
dispensing  remedies.  We  then  paid  a  hasty  visit  to  one 
or  two  unable  to  come  out,  and  once  more  I  was  im- 
pressed with  the  need  of  a  hospital  and  nurses.  The 
d?y  was  done  ere  we  started  back  and  it  was  well  after 
dark  when  we  reached  Barrow. 

One  morning  of  the  few  that  remained  was  spent  at 
the  school,  hearing  successive  classes  recite.  The  pri- 
mary department,  under  the  charge  of  the  half-breed 
referred  to,  pleased  me  very  much,  and  the  whole  school 
gave  evidence,  not  only  that  it  was  well  taught,  but  that 
it  had  been  well  taught  for  a  long  while. 

And  one  afternoon  was  spent  with  much  interest  in 
Mr.  Brower's  whaling  storehouse,  with  its  great  array 
of  weapons,  its  shoulder  guns  and  darting  guns,  both 
discharging  bombs  that  explode  within  the  bodies  of  the 
animals,  its  multitude  of  *' spades"  for  cutting  up  the 
carcasses,  its  harpoons  and  hooks ;  an  armory  far  beyond 
the  needs  of  the  guerilla  warfare  that  this  conflict  has 
degenerated  into.  One  feels  that  the  whale  had  no  chance 
at  all,  and  that  if  the  cessation  of  the  demand  for  its  most 
valuable  product  had  not  put  a  term  to  the  wholesale 
slaughter,  it  would  soon  have  put  a  term  to  itself.  Al- 
ready the  whaling  ships  were  going  far  to  the  eastward, 
to  Banks  Land  and  Victoria  Island,  following  up  the 
retreating  monsters. 

The  season  for  the  flaw  whaling  now  approached,  and 
that  had  been  one  of  the  reasons  why  I  had  had  so  much 
difficulty  in  procuring  a  guide.    I  should  like  to  be  pres- 


234  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ent  at  Point  Barrow  or  Point  Hope  during  that  season, 
which  lasts  for  part  of  April  and  the  month  of  May, 
though  I  should  not  care  to  repeat  the  experience  of  the 
young  moving-picture  photographer — one  of  the  few  of 
the  ship's  company  who  happened  to  be  ashore  on  a 
hunting  trip  when  the  Karluk  drifted  away  to  her  doom — 
who  stayed  out  on  the  ice  with  the  whalers  during  the 
whole  of  the  season  and  never  saw  a  whale. 

Flaw  whaling  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  taking  up 
a  position  on  the  edge  of  the  ice  in  the  hope  that  a  whale 
will  pass  by.  The  pack-ice  begins  to  move  away  from  the 
flaw,  i.e.,  the  ice  fast  to  the  shore,  in  April.  A  road  is  then 
made  from  the  shore  through  the  rough  hummock  ice, 
straight  out  to  its  edge  in  deep  water,  sometimes  a  mile 
or  two  away,  sometimes  five;  boats  are  dragged  to  it 
on  sleds  or  rollers,  a  camp  is  made,  and  a  sharp  lookout 
is  kept. 

Now  about  this  time  of  the  year  the  bow-head  whales 
migrate  from  their  winter  quarters  in  the  Pacific  Ocean 
to  their  summer  feeding  grounds  in  the  seas  north  of 
Alaska,  and  this  lead  or  channel  between  the  pack-ice 
and  the  shore-fast  ice  is  the  path  that  their  journey  must 
take. 

The  whale,  it  is  said,  loves  to  roll  under  the  edge  of  the 
solid  shore  ice,  scratching  his  back  from  head  to  tail 
against  it  for  the  removal  of  the  barnacles  or  other 
marine  accretions  (I  am  not  sure  of  the  barnacles)  with 
which  its  huge  bulk  becomes  incrusted  like  the  hull  of  a 
ship.  This  marine  toilet  completed,  and  perhaps  some 
cetacean  equivalent  for  the  Scotchman's  "God  bless  the 
Duke  of  Argyle ! ' '  grunted,  he  wallows  out  into  the  open 
water  of  the  lead  again,  and,  should  he  happen  to  select 
a  spot  at  or  near  which  the  hunters  are  lying  in  wait,  the 
boats  are  rapidly  in  pursuit  and  the  bombs  discharged 
into  his  body.    This  is  "flaw  whaling." 

The  word  troubled  me  a  little  at  first,  chiefly,  I  think, 
because  it  was  suggested  to  me  that  it  was  a  corruption  of 
"floe."    But  I  am  satisfied  that  it  is  not;  flaw  is  flaw,  the 


POINT  BARROW  235 

crack  or  fissure  where  the  drifting  ice  breaks  away  from 
the  ice  that  holds  solidly  to  the  shore,  and  flaw  whaling  is 
whaling  along  that  fault  or  flaw.  By  a  common  me- 
tonymy the  word  is  transferred  to  the  shore  ice  itself, 
which  is  spoken  of  as  the  flaw,  whereas  it  is  really  the  ice 
that  borders  the  flaw,  as  conversely  we  speak  of  a  man 
living  on  the  river  when  we  mean  the  bank  of  the  river. 

I  wish  very  much  that  I  had  known  more  about  whales 
when  I  went  to  Point  Barrow,  that  I  might  have  been 
able  to  learn  more  from  Mr.  Brower.  He  was  entirely 
willing  to  produce  from  his  thirty-five  years'  whaling 
experience  the  answer  to  any  answerable  question  that  I 
might  propound;  but  in  order  to  pick  a  man's  brains 
you  must  know  a  good  deal  about  his  subject  yourself, 
and  though  I  picked  away  industriously  at  Mr.  Brower 's, 
I  am  well  aware  that  there  was  no  bone  visible  when  I 
was  done.  "When,  to  change  the  figure,  a  man  is  full  of 
information  which  you  are  eager  to  obtain,  nothing  is 
simpler  than  take  him  off  and  pump  him  dry,  if  you  have 
a  pump ;  but  I  had  only  a  wretched  little  pipette,  a  sort 
of  fountain-pen-filler  of  a  syringe  that  acquired  knowl- 
edge drop  by  drop  instead  of  in  full  stream.  I  did  not 
know  how  interesting  whales  are  until  I  went  to  Point 
Barrow  on  the  eve  of  the  whaling  season,  and  now  that  I 
am  never  likely  to  have  such  a  chance  again,  I  am  seek- 
ing for  a  book  on  whales  to  inform  myself,  for  I  learned 
enough  to  realize  that  they  are  very  wonderful  creatures. 
I  learned  also  that  there  is  much  of  the  life  history  of 
the  whale  that  is  quite  unknown  with  any  certainty,  espe- 
cially with  regard  to  breeding  and  bringing  forth;  even 
the  period  of  gestation  seems  unknown. 

If  one  were  writing  a  history  of  the  Arctic  coast  there 
is  much  that  would  have  to  be  included  about  Point 
Barrow.  There  is  the  story  of  the  loss  of  the  whaling 
fleet  in  1876  when  a  dozen  vessels  were  crushed  in  the  ice, 
and  some  seventy  men  endeavouring  to  reach  the  shore 
perished.  But  the  best  known  of  such  occurrences  was 
that  of  the  season  of  1897,  when  nearly  three  hundred 


236  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

men  escaped  from  ice-beset  vessels  to  Point  Barrow,  and 
the  famous  reindeer-relief  expedition  was  despatched 
from  Cape  Prince  of  Wales  under  Lieut.  Jarvis  and 
Mr.  W.  T.  Lopp  early  in  the  following  year.  The  jour- 
ney of  these  men,  with  their  Eskimo  assistants,  over 
the  ice,  driving  a  herd  of  over  four  hundred  deer  ahead 
of  them  to  Point  Barrow,  was  a  very  remarkable  one, 
and  though  when  the  relief  arrived  late  in  March  it  was 
found  that  the  stories  of  starvation  were  untrue  (Mr. 
Brower  tells  me  that  he  had  warehouses  full  of  frozen 
caribou  carcasses),  and  indeed  the  condition  of  the  deer 
was  such  that  they  would  not  have  afforded  much  food 
until  they  could  be  fattened,  yet  the  intent  was  praise- 
worthy and  the  journey  remains  a  notable  and  most 
creditable  one.  This  undertaking,  from  first  to  last, 
cost  the  government,  it  is  said,  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
$100,000. 

Then  there  is  Lieut.  Eay's  sojourn  of  two  years 
(1881-83)  in  charge  of  one  of  the  circumpolar  stations 
maintained  in  those  years  for  scientific  purposes  by  the 
principal  governments  of  the  world,  with  its  extensive 
ethnological  and  meterological  reports. 

Lideed  there  is  material  for  a  volume  on  the  history 
of  Point  Barrow,  were  there  interest  enough  on  the  part 
of  someone  to  dig  into  it  and  write  it,  and  on  the  part  of 
the  public  to  read  it.  But  of  what  place  in  the  world  may 
that  not  be  said?  I  am  quite  sure  I  could  write  a  book 
as  large  as  this  on  the  history  of  Fort  Yukon. 


VI 
THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME 


VI 
THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME 

My  original  itinerary  made  at  Fort  Yukon  had  set  the 
middle  of  March  as  the  date  for  our  departure  from  Point 
Barrow.  On  the  14th  of  that  month  we  set  out  after  noon, 
three  sleds,  three  men  and  twenty  dogs  strong,  intending 
only  the  upper  village  of  Niiwuk  for  that  day,  where  we 
had  arranged  for  a  supply  of  walrus  meat  that  should 
serve  for  dog-feed  until  we  reached  a  part  of  the  coast 
where  driftwood  for  cooking  was  to  be  found.  A  pleas- 
ant sunshiny  day  with  little  wind  gave  us  a  fair  start, 
and  the  whole  population  turned  out  to  give  us  God- 
speed on  what  was  thought  a  venturesome  journey. 

When  we  were  come  to  Nuwuk  and  had  taken  up  our 
quarters  in  the  house  in  which  Dr.  Spence  had  held  serv- 
ice, I  gathered  up  some  children  and  they  led  me  out  to 
the  end  of  the  narrow  sandspit  that  is  the  geographical 
Point  Barrow ;  and  when  I  had  made  a  photograph  or  two 
and  had  emptied  my  pockets  of  the  candy  they  contained, 
the  children  wandered  back  and  left  me.  Kerawak  also 
had  followed,  but  after  nosing  around  awhile  he  began 
to  have  apprehensions  about  his  supper  and  returned 
also. 

Here  was  the  most  northerly  point  I  had  ever  reached 
in  my  life,  or  that  I  ever  expected  to  reach.  Of  course 
its  mere  northing  was  nothing.  Once  I  met  a  well-known 
bishop,  doing  the  usual  Alaskan  tour,  and  he  said  to  me 
laughingly,  ''You  Alaskan  missionaries  are  always  talk- 
ing about  being  so  far  north,  but  I've  been  further  north 
than  any  of  you."  "Yes?"  said  I,  "what  latitude  have 
you  reached?"  "I  have  touched  the  80th  parallel,"  said 
he.  I  was  much  impressed  for  a  moment,  then,  thinking 
quickly  and  running  over  the  avenues  to  the  polar  regions, 

239 


240  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

I  said,  "Then  you  must  have  taken  a  summer  excursion 
to  Spitzbergen.  I  should  like  very  much  to  have  gone 
with  you."  ''That's  exactly  what  I  did,"  he  replied, 
*'and  it  was  a  smooth,  delightful  passage."  So  may 
anyone  who  chooses,  in  a  favourable  season,  reach  a  point 
within  ten  degrees  of  the  north  pole  with  comfort  and 
enjoyment ;  a  pleasant  escape  from  the  common  beats  and 
summer  heats  of  Europe.  And  it  may  be  the  days  are  at 
hand  when  we  may  sweep  over  the  north  pole  itself,  as 
easily,  in  some  aerial  conveyance.  But  I  think  the  71st 
parallel  on  foot  must  always  mean  more  to  a  man  than 
much  higher  latitudes  attained  in  such  ways,  just  as  I  am 
sure  that  a  20,000-foot  mountain,  laboriously  climbed, 
must  always  mean  more  than  a  greater  altitude  reached 
by  aeronautical  means.  The  one  is  like  an  original  edition 
of  voyages  or  travels,  in  several  volumes  with  large  type, 
ample  margins,  plates  and  maps  and  all  sorts  of  appen- 
dices. The  other  is  like  a  cheap  reprint  in  one  volume, 
with  small  poor  type  and  all  the  plates  and  maps  omitted, 
or  so  blurred  and  smudged  that  you  wish  they  had  been 
omitted. 

This  irregular,  hummocky  sandspit,  swept  almost 
clean  of  snow  by  continual  winds,  rising  little  above  the 
ice  which  surrounds  it,  is  the  ''farthest  extreme"  of 
Alaska; — a  jutting  finger  of  a  defenceless,  wasting  coast 
that  within  the  memory  of  the  older  Eskimos  has  re- 
treated almost  a  mile  before  the  encroaching  waters. 
The  hummocks  are  caused  by  the  gouging  pressure  of  the 
ice,  which  digs  up  the  sand  and  shingle  and  makes  it 
ready  for  washing  away,  as  the  teeth  break  off  and  chew 
the  food  before  it  is  swallowed.  Every  storm  that  urges 
the  heavy  blocks  upon  the  shore  ploughs  furrows  into  the 
frozen  soil;  every  high  tide  washes  away  what  has  been 
excavated;  thus  year  by  year  the  erosion  proceeds  and 
the  ocean  gains  upon  the  land. 

There  can  be  few  spots  on  earth  at  once  so  dreary  and 
so  interesting  as  Point  Barrow.  Here,  at  last,  is  the 
western  gateway   of  that  Northern  Passage,   so  long 


THE  ACFLAL  POINT  BARROW— IHK  NORTHERN  EXTREME  OF  ALASKA. 


MARCH  SUN  A'T  I'oiM    1;A1;R0VV. 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  241 

dreamed  of  and  so  laboriously  sought.  Malaspina 
thought  he  had  found  it  when  he  turned  into  the  opening 
east  of  the  great  glacier  of  Mt.  St.  Elias,  and,  beating  out 
again,  called  it  Disenchantment  Bay.  Cook  thought  for 
awhile  that  he  had  found  it  when  he  sailed  round  Hinchin- 
brook  Island  into  Prince  William's  Sound,  and  again, 
with  more  confidence  when  he  doubled  Cape  Elizabeth 
into  the  broad  inlet  that  now  bears  his  name,  with  no 
land  in  sight  to  the  westward.  Kotzebue's  hopes  were 
high  when  he  opened  the  spacious  waters  of  his  Sound; 
and  when  he  landed  and  climbed  a  hill  and  saw  them 
still  stretching  to  the  east  as  far  as  his  eye  could  reach, 
he  "cannot  describe  the  emotions"  that  possess  him  at 
the  belief  that  fate  has  destined  him  to  be  its  discoverer. 
Many  an  arm  was  a  Tumagain  Arm,  many  a  cape  a 
Deception  Cape,  many  a  bay  a  Disenchantment  Bay,  a 
Goodhope  Bay  of  which  the  hope  was  to  be  blasted,  in 
the  slow  process  of  this  weary  search  by  which  so  much 
of  the  world's  coast  line  was  mapped. 

Here  it  is  at  last!  But  no  pillars  of  Hercules  dis- 
tinguish its  importance,  no  towering  cliff  or  mountainous 
headland  indicates  its  place ;  a  squat  barren  sandspit  with 
the  ice-pack  continually  pressing  upon  it,  at  once  the 
gateway  of  the  Northern  Passage  and  the  most  difficult 
part  of  it.  Perhaps  for  six  weeks  in  the  summer  the  gate 
may  open  and  ships  may  find  passage  between  the  sand 
and  the  ice — or  they  may  not  find  it  at  all.  Like  James 
Ross  at  the  magnetic  pole,  one  cannot  help  wishing 
"that  a  place  so  important  possessed  more  mark  of 
note." 

Beechey  's  Blossom  cannot  even  reach  the  gateway,  one 
year  or  another,  and  it  is  Thomas  Elson  in  the  barge  wh(i 
is  the  first  white  man  to  see  this  most  northern  point  of 
the  west  coast  of  America.  Twenty-four  years  after- 
wards, on  the  5th  August,  1850,  the  Investigator,  under 
McClure,  giving  his  consort  the  slip,  rounds  Point  Bar- 
row and  proceeds  to  the  eastward  on  the  Franklin  Search. 
The  gate  was  open.    Ten  days  later  the  Enterprise,  under 


242  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Collinson,  a  greater  though  less  fortunate  sailor,  comes 
up  too  late,  and  after  cruising  about  the  edge  of  the 
pack  for  the  rest  of  the  month,  is  compelled  to  go  south 
and  wait  a  year.    The  gate  was  closed. 

Upon  Elson's  return  to  the  Blossom  Beechey  named 
the  point,  not  unworthily,  after  Sir  John  Barrow,  for 
forty  years  one  of  the  secretaries  of  the  British  ad- 
miralty, the  earnest  advocate  and  promoter  of  a  long 
series  of  Arctic  explorations,  and  the  historian  of  the 
voyages — "the  father  of  all  modern  Arctic  enterprise" 
McClintock  calls  him — and  Beechey  reflects  with  pleasure 
that  the  name  of  his  friend  and  patron  now  stands  at 
both  extremes  of  the  Northern  Passage;  Barrow  Strait 
being  a  continuation  of  that  Lancaster  Sound  of  Baffin, 
by  which  alone  the  continent  may  be  rounded  from  the 
Atlantic.  Yet  I  can  wish  that  he  had  named  it  for  Thomas 
Elson  of  the  barge,  whose  skilful  and  dangerous  service 
is  commemorated  only  in  the  bay  east  of  Point  Barrow, 
and  even  that  not  locally  known  by  his  name. 

Next  after  Elson  in  the  barge  comes  Thomas  Simpson 
of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  advancing  from  the  east- 
ward to  complete  what  Franklin  left  undone.  When  he 
can  no  longer  proceed  with  his  boat,  he  leaves  her  in 
charge  of  Dease,  his  elderly  companion,  and  starts  for 
Point  Barrow  on  foot.  To  cross  Dease  Inlet  he  borrows 
a  native  skin  boat,  and  in  that  vehicle,  pursuing  narrow 
openings  between  the  ice  and  the  shore,  reaches  Point 
Barrow  on  the  4th  August,  1837,  the  first  white  man  to 
set  foot  there,  for  Elson  did  not  land ;  and  thus  ties  the 
north  coast  to  the  west.  Eaising  the  British  flag  he 
takes  possession  in  the  name  of  King  William  IV,  not 
knowing  that  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  has  begun. 
Poor  Simpson! — for  this  work,  not  then  knowing  of  his 
more  extensive  work  to  the  eastward,  of  the  two  follow- 
ing years,  by  which  he  nearly  completed  the  definite 
limits  of  the  American  continent,  the  British  government 
announced  its  intention  of  conferring  upon  him  a  pension 
of  an  hundred  pounds  a  year,  and  the  Royal  Geographical 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  243 

Society  voted  him  its  Founder 's  Medal ;  but  he  never  had 
them  or  knew  of  them,  being  shot  and  killed  in  some  mys- 
terious half-breed  quarrel,  the  true  particulars  of  which 
were  never  known,  while  on  his  way  to  take  ship  for  Eng- 
land, in  his  32nd  year.  A  bright,  clean,  eager  spirit,  I 
judge  him;  one  of  those  resolute  young  Scotchmen  who 
will  not  be  denied,  to  whom  exploration  owes  so  much, 
and  I  have  always  lamented  his  untimely  end.  The  sim- 
ple and  modest  narrative  which  covers  his  life's  work, 
I  would  not  willingly  miss  from  my  shelves. 

A  little  while  since  I  was  erecting  monuments  at  Cape 
Prince  of  Wales  and  Point  Hope,  but  here  at  Point  Bar- 
row I  would  set  up  a  rostral  column  after  the  Roman 
fashion,  and  from  it  there  should  project  the  beaks  of 
the  boats  that  reached  or  passed  through  this  gateway. 
Elson's  barge  and  Simpson's  oomiak  should  have  high- 
est place,  the  one  coming  from  the  south  and  the  other 
from  the  east,  then  should  come  Sheddon's  yacht  the 
Ncmcy  Dawson,  the  first  ship  to  round  Point  Barrow,  and 
there  should  follow  the  ships  of  the  fifties,  McClure's 
Investigator,  Collinson's  Enterprise,  Kellett's  Herald, 
and  McGuire's  Plover,  which  last  passed  two  winters  in 
Elson  Bay;  every  one  of  them  on  that  same  rescue  service 
so  fertile  of  every  sort  of  discovery  except  the  one  on 
which  they  were  bent;  and  there  would  be  room  for 
Amundsen's  Gjoa,  the  first  ship  to  make  the  complete 
Northern  Passage  (though  I  would  rather  try  to  take  her 
round  Point  Barrow  than  try  to  pronounce  her  name), 
and  for  Bartlett's  Karluk,  though  she  did  but  pass  the 
gate  to  be  drifted  back  to  her  doom.  Yes,  and  there  would 
be  room  for  the  Thetis  of  Stockton — he  that  wrote  the  let- 
ter about  Point  Hope — who  had  the  nerve  to  take  a  gov- 
ernment vessel  to  Herschel  Island !  Upon  the  base  of  it 
there  would  be  room  to  cut  the  name  of  Ensign  W.  L. 
Howard  of  Stoney's  Kobuk  party,  which  made  the  first 
white  man's  overland  journey  to  this  place  in  1887. 

But  Point  Barrow  has  other  interest  than  this  wealth 
of  intrepid  pioneers.    Standing  on  this  point  today  one  is 


244  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

still  on  the  very  threshold  of  the  unknown.  East  of  it, 
south  of  it,  west  of  it,  is  explored  and  mapped ;  one  hun- 
dred miles  north  of  it  is  as  blank  today  as  when  Simpson 
set  foot  here.  While  Cape  Chelyuskin,  the  most  northerly 
point  of  Asia,  stretches  much  further  towards  the  pole, 
Nansen  in  the  Fram,  on  that  most  remarkable  and  fortu- 
nate of  all  Arctic  voyages,  drifted  right  across  its  merid- 
ian, far  yet  to  the  north  of  it.  But  I  think  I  am  right 
in  saying  that  there  is  no  record  of  any  ship  sailing 
an  hundred  miles  north  of  Point  Barrow;  the  immensely 
and  inexplicably  heavy  ice  floes  have  always  prevented  it. 
Collinson's  latitude  of  73°  23',  seven  or  eight  degrees  to 
the  west  of  it,  is  still  the  extreme  advance  that  I  can  find, 
though  Parry  in  the  U.  S.  S.  Rodgers  is  said  to  have 
reached  73°  44',  some  ten  degrees  further  yet  to  the  west. 
Whether  vagrant  whaler,  caring  little  and  even  perhaps 
knowing  little  about  geographical  position  (for  I  was 
astonished  to  learn  that  some  of  them  are  men  of  very 
scant  nautical  knowledge,  though  expert  ice-pilots),  may 
have  drifted  or  been  driven  into  higher  latitude,  no  one 
can  say;  the  known  waters  stretch  less  than  two  degrees 
beyond  the  point. 

Is  there  land  beyond  it?  Is  there  land  north  of  any 
part  of  the  Alaskan  coast?  That  still  remains  one  of 
the  most  interesting  of  the  world's  geographical  prob- 
lems. Land  seems  less  likely  now  after  Storker  Storker- 
son's  sled  journey  (of  Stefansson's  expedition)  which 
nearly  reached  the  74th  parallel,  150  miles  to  the  east- 
ward, and  the  deep  soundings  he  found,  exceeding  1,000 
fathoms  with  no  bottom — but  it  is  by  no  means  settled. 
Lands  do  arise  out  of  very  deep  water.  Banks  Land 
itself  does,  and  one  thinks  that  the  "continental  shelf" 
figures  somewhat  too  weightily  in  the  arguments  of  those 
w^ho  make  the  Beaufort  Sea  a  large  part  of  the  Arctic 
Ocean.  The  extraordinarily  heavy  masses  of  old  ice, 
"paleocrystic"  as  they  are  called,  which  prevent  the 
penetration  of  these  waters,  seem  confined  by  some  land 
to  the  north;  migrating  birds  still  fly  due  north  from 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  245 

Point  Barrow.  At  any  rate,  beyond  Point  Barrow  lies 
the  largest  unexplored  area  of  the  northern  hemisphere, 
and  the  great  irregular  white  patch  that  signifies  ''un- 
known" on  the  circumpolar  maps,  stretches  down  nearer 
to  it  than  to  any  other  point  of  continental  America. 

While  to  the  great  part  of  mankind  all  this  is,  I  sup- 
pose, matter  of  the  utmost  indifference,  and  one  is  not 
unfamiliar  with  a  certain  contemptuous  tone  in  which 
''such  a  to-do  about  barren  islands  in  the  Arctic  regions'* 
is  referred  to,  yet  to  the  thoughtful  mind  that  regards 
the  whole  earth  as  the  domain  of  man  and  all  knowledge 
that  it  is  possible  to  gather  about  it  a  proper  sphere  for 
his  enquiry,  this  great  irregular  white  patch  will  re- 
main a  challenge  until  it  can  be  overlaid  with  the  land 
that  it  contains,  or  painted  blue  for  the  sea  that  cov- 
ers it. 

Such  thoughts  ran  through  my  mind  as  I  stood  on  the 
sandspit  and  gazed  long  out  into  the  vague,  indetermi- 
nable distance  of  ice,  hazy  and  mysterious.  How  closely 
Nature  guards  some  of  her  secrets!  With  what  ample 
labour  and  suffering  has  knowledge  of  the  north  been 
gained  in  the  three  centuries  that  elapsed  from  the  time 
Henry  Hudson  crossed  the  80th  parallel  to  the  time  that 
Eobert  Peary  reached  the  90th ! 

But  darkness  was  at  hand,  and  I  made  my  way  back 
to  the  village,  still  contemplating  and  speculating.  Wal- 
ter, when  my  absence  was  prolonged,  had  begun  to  pre- 
pare supper  and  it  was  ready  when  I  returned,  and  when, 
an  hour  or  so  later,  I  unrolled  my  sleeping-bag  and  crept 
into  it  amongst  a  number  of  reposers  on  the  floor,  my 
mind  was  still  too  active  for  sleep. 

These  igloos  at  Niiwuk,  I  reflected,  were  the  most  north- 
erly fixed  habitations  of  the  continent,  and  these  people 
around  me  the  ultimate  American  hyperboreans,  for 
Boothea  Felix  has  only  occasional  visits  from  wandering 
folk  and  neither  Ross  in  1830  nor  McClintock  in  1859 
found  any  trace  of  natives  in  the  northern  part.  My 
thoughts    began    to    revolve   about   the   people    I   was 


246  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

amongst,  for  when  all  is  said  and  done  the  people  that 
inhabit  any  country  are  far  and  away  its  most  interesting 
feature. 

I  had  now  seen  much  the  greater  part  of  our  Arctic 
Eskimos.  The  sub-Arctic  people  of  the  Seward  penin- 
sula, of  the  Yukon  delta,  the  Kuskokwim  and  Bristol 
Bay  countries,  are  far  more  numerous;  but  these  of  my 
acquaintance  may  not  unjustly  be  thought  of  as  the  hardi- 
est and  most  interesting  of  them  all,  thrust  like  a  spear- 
head farthest  into  the  domain  of  darkness  and  cold. 
Where  else  shall  a  people  be  found,  so  hardy,  so  indus- 
trious, so  kindly,  and  withal  so  cheerful  and  content, 
inhabiting  such  utterly  naked  country,  lashed  by  such 
constant  ferocity  of  weather? 

The  stories  of  the  white  man's  first  acquaintance  with 
them  came  back  to  my  mind.  However  awed  and  be- 
wildered by  the  apparition  of  beings  undreamed  of,  how- 
ever overwhelmed  by  the  evidence  of  their  might,  they 
seem  never  to  have  lost  courage  and  self-possession,  and 
their  attitude  was  very  diiferent  from  that  of  the  tropical 
savages  who  prostrated  themselves  before  Columbus.  I 
saw  the  sixteen-year-old  boy  that  Kotzebue  tells  of,  who 
planted  himself  outside  his  sod  dwelling  with  drawn  bow, 
and  withstood  the  approach  of  the  commander  and  his 
three  marines  until  they  had  laid  their  muskets  and  cut- 
lasses on  the  ground.  My  heart  goes  out  to  that  boy  "of 
a  pleasant,  lively  countenance"  as  one's  heart  goes  out  to 
all  dauntless  youth,  and  I  think  the  more  of  Kotzebue  and 
his  men  that  they  were  themselves  moved  to  admiration 
by  his  resolute  defence  of  his  home.  The  whole  inci- 
dent is  characteristic  and  instructive,  the  bravery  of  the 
boy  not  more  than  the  fierce  cupidity  of  the  mother, 
dazed  beyond  the  dreams  of  Eskimo  avarice  by  the  wealth 
of  great  brass  buttons  that  ''swam  into  her  ken"  when 
the  explorers  entered  the  hut,  and  resolved,  come  what 
might,  to  share  in  it ;  so  that  when  she  had  herself  failed 
in  several  surreptitious  attempts  to  twist  some  of  those 
buttons  off;  she  sent  her  little  children  to  crawl  round  on 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  247 

the  other  side  and  try  to  bite  them  off.  I  know  they 
would  have  adorned  her  son's  attire  rather  than  her  own, 
had  she  secured  them,  and  I  find  it  in  my  heart  to  wish 
that  she  had. 

Then,  at  a  leap,  my  imagination  crossed  the  continent, 
and  I  chuckled  at  the  sight  of  the  redoubtable  Martin 
Frobisher,  on  one  of  his  voyages  to  his  *'Meta  Incog- 
nita, ' '  flying  down  a  hill  to  his  boat  with  an  arrow  quiv- 
ering in  his  buttock  from  the  bow  of  an  Eskimo  he  had 
vainly  attempted  to  kidnap.  They  never  lacked  courage, 
these  Eskimos,  wherever  they  were  found.  Had  they  not 
learned  to  take  the  most  monstrous  creature  in  the  world 
— the  whale?  Beechey  found  a  floating  carcass  with  an 
Eskimo  harpoon  in  it  and  a  drag  attached  made  of  an 
inflated  sealskin,  by  which  the  whale  had  evidently  been 
worried  to  death,  and  is  moved  to  marvel  that  ''these  un- 
tutored barbarians,  with  their  slender  boats  and  limited 
means,  contrive  to  take  the  largest  animal  of  the  crea- 
tion." 

Often  indeed,  when  doubtful  of  the  designs  of  the  new- 
comers, their  demeanour  was  decidedly  hostile,  or  when 
overwhelmed  by  the  sight  of  edge  tools  and  iron  in 
abundance — the  great  riches  of  the  world  to  them — their 
covetousness  led  them  to  pillage  and  theft.  But  they 
have  very  few  lives  of  white  men  to  their  charge; 
very  few  indeed  until  they  had  been  debauched  and  in- 
flamed by  the  white  man's  liquor. 

Long  before  I  had  any  personal  acquaintance  with 
them  I  had  felt  that  human  nature  acquires  a  new  dignity 
when  we  contemplate  the  mastery  over  their  adverse, 
intractable  environment  which  the  Eskimos  achieved. 
Naked,  in  the  Arctic  regions,  with  naught  but  what  their 
hands  could  fashion  from  what  their  hands  could  find, 
they  subdued  the  rocks  and  the  ice,  the  bitter  winds  and 
stormy  seas,  not  merely  to  a  provision  of  the  necessaries 
of  life,  but  to  an  existence  that  included  vivacity  and 
enjoyment.  Poor  Tom  Hood  wheezed  from  his  consump- 
tive couch  that  it  was  only  for  a  livelihood  that  he  had 


248  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ever  been  a  lively  Hood,  which  I  think  is  the  most  poign- 
ant pun  in  literature;  but  these  men  have  always  been 
lively  although  one  would  consider  their  occupation,  con- 
dition, and  circumstances  irresistibly  depressing. 

Upon  Buckle's  deadly  theory  that  we  are  solely  the 
product  of  our  environment  there  is  no  explanation  of 
the  Eskimos.  Taine's  view  that  this  constraining  force 
is  always  modified  by  natural  bent,  and  that  every  race 
displays  the  outcome  of  the  interplay  of  these  two  factors, 
has  always  appealed  much  more  to  me  so  far  as  historical 
philosophizing  goes,  which  is  not  very  far;  and  I  should 
assign  as  the  natural  bent  of  the  Eskimos  an  invincible 
tendency  to  lightness  and  gaiety  of  heart.  Indeed  one 
may  perhaps  be  pardoned  for  saying  that  had  the  Es- 
kimos themselves  shown  any  disposition  to  be  philoso- 
phers they  would  have  found,  like  Dr.  Johnson's  old 
college  friend,  that  "cheerfulness  was  always  breaking 
in." 

Hear  Beechey  again,  when  he  first  landed  at  Point 
Hope.  None  but  old  people  and  children  were  present, 
the  man  power  absent  on  some  hunting  excursion.  ''An 
old  man  having  started  pounding  on  a  drum-head,  two  in- 
firm old  hags  threw  themselves  into  a  variety  of  attitudes, 
snapping  their  fingers  and  smirking  from  behind  their 
seal-skin  hoods,"  and  "several  chubby  girls,  roused  by 
the  music,  joined  the  performance."  He  reflects,  "We 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  a  set  of  people  happy 
who  did  not  appear  to  possess  a  single  comfort  on 
earth. ' ' 

This  invincible  cheerfulness  is  perhaps  their  most  dis- 
tinctive trait,  and  has  pointed  a  moral  for  many  a  writer 
since  Goldsmith  sang  of  them  in  that  admirable  poem, 
"The  Traveller."  It  could  be  as  readily  illustrated  by 
citations  from  the  Atlantic  coast  as  from  the  Pacific,  from 
Eoss  and  Parry  and  all  the  subsequent  voyagers,  did  one 
not  prefer  to  illustrate  an  Alaskan  theme  with  Alaskan 
instance.  Yet  I  will  quote  Knud  Easmussen,  who  knows 
more  of  The  People  of  the  Polar  North  than  anyone  else 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  249 

with  whom  I  am  acquainted,  and  says  of  the  Greenland 
Eskimos,  ''Their  domestic  life  flies  past  in  a  succession 
of  happy  days.  If  you  stop  to  listen  outside  a  hut  you 
will  always  hear  cheerful  talking  and  laughter  from 
within;"*  and  again,  ''an  irresponsible  happiness  at 
merely  being  alive  finds  expression  in  their  action  and 
conversation. ' '  t 

With  their  courage  and  their  cheer,  they  do  not  lack  the 
finer,  more  delicate  qualities.  The  reader  mil  perhaps 
recall  the  young  man  who  left  his  own  house  and  spent 
the  night  in  a  deserted  tumble-down  igloo  rather  than 
incommode  his  guests  who  did  not  know  they  were  his 
guests.  There  is  nothing  in  the  whole  journey  of  which  I 
feel  so  much  ashamed  as  of  the  annoyance  that  I  know 
my  manner  must  have  betrayed — though  I  said  nothing — 
when  this  young  man  and  his  companions  arrived  at  the 
igloo  which  we  had  taken  possession  of  for  the  night. 
And  if  there  be  any  meaning  left  in  the  word,  this  rein- 
deer herder,  smilingly  picking  up  his  sleeping-bag  and 
leaving  his  own  home  to  spend  a  cheerless  night  amidst 
the  ruins  of  an  old  igloo,  was  certainly  a  gentleman.  It 
was  the  magnanimity  of  hospitality. 

In  other  matters  they  have  left  the  old  darkness  be- 
hind them.  The  exposure  of  the  aged  ceased  a  long  time 
ago.  Mr.  Brower  told  me  there  were  only  two  cases  within 
his  knowledge :  one  in  1887,  when  an  old  woman  known 
by  the  white  men  as  "Granny"  was  walled  up  in  a  snow- 
house  and  left  to  starve.  Captain  Herendean,  who  was 
that  year  in  charge  of  the  whaling  station,  Mr.  Brower 
being  "outside,"  went  to  the  place,  kicked  down  the 
snow-house  and  brought  the  old  woman  to  the  station, 
where  she  lived  for  several  years  and  was  useful  in  mak- 
ing boots  and  skin  clothes.  The  other  was  in  the  winter 
of  1888-89,  and  in  that  case  the  old  woman  perished. 
Next  summer  the  Thetis  came,  and  the  commander  sent 
a  lieutenant  and  boat's  crew  for  the  intimidation  of  those 
who  were  concerned  in  the  deed,  who  understood  the 

*P.  63.  tP-  118. 


250  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

purpose  and  fled  on  the  approach — one  more  mark  to  the 
credit  of  Lieut.  Connnander  Stockton. 

Exposures  of  the  aged,  though  occurring  on  the  coast, 
were  much  more  common  among  the  inland  people,  who 
had  no  food  resources  but  the  caribou,  and  were  com- 
pelled to  follow  the  herds  in  their  migration  over  wide 
areas,  just  as  the  wolves  do.  Unless  the  hunters  followed 
the  herds,  everyone  would  starve,  and  it  was  sometimes  a 
stern  economic  necessity  to  be  rid  of  those  who  hampered 
their  movements.  The  old  folks  expected  it  and  were 
resigned. 

The  exposure  of  infants  lingered  longer.  There  is  no 
doubt  it  was  the  custom  of  the  Eskimos  to  expose  one  out 
of  each  pair  of  twins  bom,  and  often  when  children  came 
too  frequently,  so  that  a  mother  would  have  two  infants 
in  arms  at  once,  the  newcomer  was  laid  out  in  the  snow 
and  left  to  die.  Mr.  Brower  told  me  that  within  his  own 
time  there  had  been  many  such  cases,  the  last  one  occur- 
ring not  more  than  ten  years  ago,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Colville  river.  Even  now  it  is  perhaps  not  utterly  a 
thing  of  the  past  amongst  remote  bands  of  inland  Es- 
kimos. We  travelled  from  Herschel  Island  towards  the 
interior  in  company  with  an  old  man  who  was  said  to 
have  recently  exposed  the  illegitimate  child  of  his  daugh- 
ter— though  it  may  have  been  only  rumour.  But  amongst 
those  who  have  received  the  Christian  religion  I  was  as- 
sured no  such  thing  has  ever  occurred. 

The  belief  in  the  sanctity  of  human  life  is  indeed  a 
Christian  teaching,  a  corollary  of  the  belief  in  the  infinite 
value  of  the  individual  soul;  and  I  should  not  be  sur- 
prised if  those  who  have  long  since  rejected  all  the  sanc- 
tions, and  all  the  restraints,  of  Christianity,  should  openly 
advocate,  as  they  do  now  silently  approve,  the  exposure 
or  ''euthanasia"  of  sickly  or  superabundant  infants,  on 
the  plea  that  we  hear  loudly  enough  already,  of  "Fewer 
and  Better  Children."  This  new,  scientific  heathenism 
is  far  more  revolting  and  ghastly  than  any  ignorant 
wickedness  of  the  ''Ipanee"  Eskimos,  and  that  is  what 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  251 

Gilbert  Chesterton  means  when  in  his  Victorian  Age  in 
Literature  he  speaks  of  ''the  thing  called  Eugenics"  as 
"a  crown  of  crime  and  folly." 

A  letter  that  I  wrote  to  an  influential  friend  soon  after 
my  return  from  this  journey,  pleading  for  more  kindly 
consideration  for  our  Arctic  Eskimos,  for  a  further,  and 
particularly  medical,  development  of  missionary  work  on 
this  coast,  was  met  with  the  statement  that  according  to 
my  own  showing  the  coast  was  a  country  unfit  for  human 
occupation  and  that  the  best  thing  that  could  be  done  for 
its  unfortunate  inhabitants  would  be  to  take  them  bodily 
away  from  it.  It  is  difficult  to  answer  such  a  conclusion ; 
what  can  one  say  in  rebuttal  that  shall  suffice  ?  That  they 
are  content  and  happy  does  not  matter;  obviously  they  do 
not  know  what  is  good  for  themselves;  that  they  are 
able  to  wring  a  support  from  their  country  is  not  to  the 
point  when  better  support  could  be  had  elsewhere.  How 
easy  it  is,  in  theory,  to  depopulate  the  less  eligible  parts 
of  the  earth's  surface  on  economic  grounds,  and  gather  all 
mankind  into  the  amenable,  fructiferous  regions !  I  sup- 
pose some  sunny  spot  in  the  South  Sea  Islands  could  be 
found  where  our  expatriated  Eskimos  might  repose  be- 
neath the  shade  of  the  trees,  having  replaced  their  ragged 
furs  with  garlands  of  flowers  and  substituted  cocoanut 
oil  for  seal  oil.    It  is  an  engaging  vision. 

I  once  told  an  Eskimo  congregation  of  such  countries, 
where  one  may  lie  under  a  tree  and  wait  for  one's  break- 
fast to  drop  into  one's  mouth;  and  when  the  sermon  was 
done  a  brisk  old  dame  came  up  and  with  very  expressive 
dumbshow  indicated  her  intention  of  immediately  pro- 
ceeding to  that  land.  She  made  long  detours  and  spirals 
with  her  forefinger,  ending  in  remote  distance,  and  then 
stopped,  pointed  to  herself,  threw  her  head  far  back  and 
opened  her  mouth  wide — and  joined  in  the  general  merri- 
ment which  her  pantomime  provoked.  Again  and  again 
she  pointed  to  herself  and  nodded  her  emphatic  grey 
head.  No  more  jigging  through  the  ice  for  tomcod  at  30° 
below  zero  for  her  breakfast;  no  more  trudging  weary 


252  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

miles  through  the  snow  to  set  rabbit  and  ptarmigan 
snares.    She  was  bound 

"Where  the  feathery  palm  trees  rise 
And  the  date  grows  ripe  under  sunny  skies." 

T'Efey  joked  about  it  for  a  long  time.  Yet  I  remember 
Mr.  Dooley  described  these  happy-island  folks  as  starv- 
ing to  death  for  lack  of  stepladders  when  the  fruit  did  not 
fall  fast  enough,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  our  Eskimos 
would  be  improved  by  such  translation,  or  that  their  lot 
would  be  more  enviable  because  more  sedentary.  I  am 
sure  that  the  world  would  be  the  poorer  for  the  loss  of  its 
bold  and  active  Arctic  population. 

After  all,  can  a  country  justly  be  described  as  unfit  for 
human  habitation  that  has  maintained  human  communi- 
ties for  untold  generations  ?  Naked  I  have  called  it,  and 
naked  it  is,  to  an  eye  from  lower  latitudes ;  cursed  with 
constant  bitter  winds  I  found  it,  newly  come  from  the 
forested  interior.  But  these  terms  are  only  relative.  It 
is  not  naked  nor  is  its  weather  severe  in  comparison  with 
the  Antarctic  continent,  where  nothing  grows  at  all,  and 
where  fierce  gales  blow  at  70°  below  zero.  The  daring 
thought  of  Master  Richard  Thome,  in  his  oft-quoted 
letter  to  the  Archbishop  of  York  in  the  time  of  Henry 
VIII,  * '  I  judge  there  to  be  no  land  inhabitable  *  or  sea  in- 
navigable, ' '  is  surely  a  more  fitting,  not  to  say  a  nobler, 
judgment  about  the  earth,  however  we  be  forced  to 
qualify  it  in  some  particulars.  Certain  it  is,  on  the  one 
hand,  from  the  indisputable  evidence  of  the  remains  of 
habitations,  that  the  Arctic  regions  were  at  one  time  much 
more  numerously  occupied  than  they  are  today,  and,  on 
the  other,  that  the  pressure  of  accumulating  peoples  in 
the  temperate  and  attractive  climates  was  never  before 
so  great.    Had  I  to  make  such  choice  myself  I  had  far 

*  It  is  easy  to  see  how  "  habitable  "  became  "  inhabitable "  and  thus 
needed  a  new  negative  prefix  to  express  its  opposite;  it  is  more  curious 
that  "  ebriety  "  and  "  inebriety  "  have  come  to  mean  the  same  thing,  as  they 
do  in  the  dictionaries  today. 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  253 

rather  be  a  free  Arctic  Eskimo,  hunting  the  whale  and  the 
walrus  in  the  stormy  waters,  following  the  caribou  far 
inland  to  the  foothills,  than  a  Chinese  peasant,  tied  do^vn 
for  life  to  the  cultivation  of  a  tenth  of  an  acre  of  patri- 
monial soil,  selling  his  children  into  slavery  to  eke  out 
a  minimum  subsistence.  There  are  worse  lots  than  the 
Eskimo 's ! 

It  is  hard  for  soft  and  sheltered  people  to  believe  that 
the  Eskimo  can  be  devotedly  attached  to  his  native  land ; 
hard  to  see  what  charm  can  hold  him  to  barren  rocks  and 
savage  wilderness  of  snow.  They  can  understand  the 
attraction  of  ''my  native  vale"  that  Samuel  Rogers  wrote 
sentimentally  about  in  a  song  that  used  to  be  loved  of  fat 
mezzo-sopranos  when  I  was  young: 

"The  shepherd's  horn  at  break  of  day, 
The  ballet  danced  in  twilight  glade, 
The  canzonet  and  roundelay 
That  echo  in  the  greenwood  shad^— 
These  simple  joys  that  never  fail 
Shall  bind  me  to  my  native  vale." 

(I  quote  from  memory.)  But  they  can  see  no  joys,  no 
possibility  of  sentiment,  in  a  land  where  life  is  one  long 
fight  against  a  severity  of  nature  of  which  they  can  only 
shudderingly  conceive.  Yet  it  is  so;  as  Goldsmith  ex- 
pressed in  four  unforgettable  lines  better  than  all  my 
pleadings  can  put  it.  But  if  a  man  will  not  read  four 
lines  of  poetry,  he  must  e'en  be  content  to  read  four 
pages  of  prose. 

So  we  will  not  depopulate  the  Arctic  regions.  Eather 
would  I  see  Banks  Land  and  Victoria  Island  and  Elles- 
mere  Land  reoccupied  with  kindly,  hospitable  nomads; 
and  I  am  disposed  to  hope  that  Mr.  Stefansson's  plan  for 
the  domestication  of  the  polar  or  musk  ox,  which  is  no 
wilder  than  was  Sheldon  Jackson's  plan  for  domestica- 
tion of  the  reindeer,  may  ultimately  bring  about  some 
such  result. 

Meanwhile  I  would  not  do  one  thing  to  render  the 


254  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Eskimo  less  dependent  upon  his  environment,  less  capable 
of  continuing  to  conquer  that  environment  by  continuing 
to  adapt  himself  to  it ;  would  not  teach  him  one  need  that 
could  not  with  reasonable  certainty  be  supplied.  I  would 
take  to  him  the  blessings  of  Christianity,  of  its  religion 
and  morality;  I  would  illuminate  the  dread  darkness  of 
his  spirit  world  with  the  sure  and  certain  hope  of  a  joy- 
ful resurrection;  I  would  protect  him  against  the  white 
man  seeking  whom  he  may  devour ;  I  would  provide  medi- 
cal relief  from  the  diseases  which,  in  large  measure,  the 
predatory  white  man  has  introduced;  and  then  I  would 
let  the  Eskimo  civilization  develop  itself,  as  it  would 
develop  itself,  narrowly  confined  and  circumscribed  of 
necessity,  along  natural  Arctic  lines,  in  accord  with  the 
natural  bent  of  the  race.  They  gave  no  inconsiderable 
sums  for  the  Ked  Cross  last  year;  they  contributed  to  the 
relief  of  the  destitute  Armenians;  when  I  was  at  Point 
Barrow  they  were  taking  a  collection  for  missions  to 
China. 

"Without  any  desire  to  be  sententious,  there  seems  to 
me,  long  dwelling  upon  the  Eskimos  and  their  habitat, 
some  suggestion  of  a  relation  between  their  economic  con- 
dition and  this  dead  level  coast.  The  only  complete  com- 
munists that  I  know  of  are  the  Eskimos,  the  only  com- 
pletely equal  people,  with  none  that  are  richer,  none  that 
are  more  respected  than  the  others,  none  that  emerge  in 
any  degree  above  the  others.  The  Alaskan  Indians,  who 
approach  nearest  to  them,  have  chiefs  with  more  or  less 
authority  according  to  their  character,  but  there  are  no 
chiefs  amongst  the  Eskimos.  The  rhetorical  boast  that 
one  used  to  hear  in  Fourth  of  July  orations,  that  every 
American  is  a  king,  is  literally  true  of  these  oldest  Ameri- 
cans;— a  king  without  a  subject. 

Our  Eskimos  and  Indians  alike  are  practical  commu- 
nists, the  only  difference  between  them  the  one  above 
noted.  Game  does  not  belong  to  the  hunter  but  to  the 
community.  No  one  ever  goes  hungry  if  there  be  any- 
thing to  eat  in  the  village.    One  man  may  have  a  larger 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  255 

ihouse  than  another,  but  if  so  it  is  either  because  he  has 
a  larger  family  or  because  he  designs  it  for  public  gath- 
erings. When  a  man  dies  his  belongings  are  scattered 
amongst  all  the  relations  and  friends,  even  to  the  com- 
plete stripping  of  the  widow  and  her  children.  There 
is  nothing  private  in  an  Eskimo  or  Indian  village ;  in  the 
primitive  state  there  is  not  even  any  privacy. 

The  communal  system  has  its  advantages  and  attrac- 
tions, and  for  my  part,  amongst  those  with  whom  I  dwell 
or  have  influence,  I  am  loath  to  take  measures  towards 
breaking  it  up.  I  am  not  sufficiently  sure  about  the 
superiority  for  them  of  the  system  of  indi\ddual  prop- 
erty that  must  be  substituted.  Life  becomes  much  sim- 
pler, and  in  a  certain  way  much  more  effective,  when  all 
one 's  convictions  are  cut  and  dried,  when  the  path  of  duty 
is  always  seen  straight  ahead,  but  I  have  observed  that 
sometimes  such  confidence  is  in  inverse  ration  to  intelli- 
gence. I  labour  under  the  disadvantage  of  wanting  to 
be  sure  whither  I  am  going  before  I  go  ahead. 

At  Wainwright  I  saw  an  Eskimo  who  was  disliked  be- 
cause he  was  "rich"  and  would  not  share  his  riches,  and 
he  was  encouraged  by  the  school-teacher  to  continue  his 
accumulating  habit  as  an  example  to  the  others  of  the 
thrift  that  brings  prosperity.  I  do  not  know  that  he  had 
worked  harder  than  others,  though  that  may  be ;  he  was 
probably  shrewder  than  others ;  but  the  main  difference 
evidently  was  that  he  had  held  while  others  had  dis- 
tributed. I  have  little  doubt  that  by  and  by  the  pressure 
will  become  too  great  for  him  and  that  his  "riches"  will 
be  scattered  in  lavish  feasting,  to  the  restoration  of  his 
popularity  and  the  general  equality.  Beyond  any  ques- 
tion, hard  work  and  shrewdness  and  thrift  would  be  en- 
couraged were  the  desire  of  owning  in  severalty  sys- 
tematically implanted  and  fostered; — and  there  would 
follow,  would  there  not?  selfishness  and  cupidity,  the 
noxious  roots  of  "man's  inhumanity  to  man"?  It  could 
hardly  be  otherwise.  Already,  at  Wainwright,  our  Dives 
was  charged  with  indifference  to  the  wants  of  others; 


256  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

already  there  was  envy  of  his  stores  of  grab  and  clothing, 
of  guns  and  blankets. 

I  tread  warily  because  I  do  not  see  clearly.  I  will  not 
stretch  my  hand  to  destroy  until  I  am  sure  about  the 
rebuilding.  So  I  have  resisted  the  frequent  exhorta- 
tions to  denounce  the  *'potlach"  system,  by  which  all 
accumulations  are  disposed  of  at  a  stroke,  and  in  prepa- 
ration for  which  alone  any  accumulation  takes  place. 

If  it  be  the  destiny  of  the  Alaskan  Indians  to  be  ab- 
sorbed in  the  white  race,  as  many  think,  and  of  which 
there  are  certainly  some  signs,  the  change  will  come  of 
itself,  and  even  though,  as  I  think  probable,  separate 
racial  existence  subsist  for  a  long  time  yet,  the  influence 
of  the  white  man's  ideas  and  of  the  white  man's  com- 
petitive system  will  gradually  assert  itself,  as  it  has  long 
since  begun  to  do  on  the  Yukon,  and  the  substitution  will 
automatically  take  place.  I  do  not  feel  that  it  is  my  duty 
to  hasten  it. 

But  of  one  thing  I  feel  reasonably  sure :  that  the  plane 
of  civilization  reached  by  the  Eskimos  and  Indians  of 
Alaska  is  almost  the  highest  plane  that  can  be  maintained 
under  a  completely  communistic  system.  Where,  quite 
apart  from  the  system,  there  are  insuperable  natural  ob- 
stacles to  the  attainment  of  a  much  higher  plane,  as  is 
probably  the  case  with  the  Indians  and  almost  certainly 
with  the  Eskimos,  it  seems  not  worth  while  to  disturb  it. 
As  I  have  said,  it  has  advantages  and  attractions.  There 
is  almost  entire  absence  of  envy  and  covetousness. 

"Though  poor  the  peasant's  hut,  his  feast  though  small, 
He  sees  his  little  lot  the  lot  of  all ; 
Sees  no  contiguous  palace  rear  its  head 
To  shame  the  meanness  of  his  humble  shed, 
No  costly  lord  the  sumptuous  banquet  deal 
To  make  him  loathe  his  (I  can  find  no  word  to  substi- 
tute for  vegetable)  meal." 

Content  is  the  normal  condition  of  the  Eskimo,  the 
basis  of  his  characteristic  lightheartedness.    If  happiness 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  257 

were  the  true  goal  of  human  life,  there  would  be  much 
to  be  said  in  general  for  the  Eskimo  system,  yet 

**  Their  level  life  is  but  a  smouldering  fire, 
Nor  quenched  by  want  nor  fanned  by  strong  desire."  * 

No  man  who  admires  the  triumphs  of  human  genius, 
no  man  who  cherishes  the  riches  of  the  human  intellect, 
can  be  content  to  see  life  lie  permanently  at  that  level. 
It  affords  only  the  very  narrowest  scope  for  literature, 
art  and  science.  It  offers  no  opportunity  for  those  aspir- 
ing, flaming  conceptions,  those  strenuous,  persistent  ef- 
forts, which  separate  man  by  such  a  great  gulf  from  the 
animal  kingdom;  for  the  manifesting  of  those  divine, 
creative  qualities  which  are  indeed  his  chief  claim  to  a 
divine  origin. 

And  that  brings  me  back  to  the  reflection  with  which 
this  passage  was  opened,  that  there  is  some  suggestion  of 
a  relation  between  the  economic  condition  of  the  Eskimos 
and  the  dead-level  coastal  plain  which  they  occupy  in 
northwest  America.  It  is  easy  to  travel  over ;  it  presents 
no  rough  irregularities  of  surface;  it  has  no  distinctive 
individual  parts,  or  only  such  as  the  encroaching  waters 
have  eaten  into  its  border.  It  produces  an  abundance  of 
lowly  grass,  of  brief,  bright  flowers,  nipped  almost  as 
they  are  blown,  of  shrubs  that  creep  over  the  surface 
rather  than  rise  from  it.  With  its  surrounding  waters 
it  affords  a  subsistence. 

But  how  dreary  and  monotonous  it  is  to  an  eye  familiar 
with  other  scenes ! — how  empty  and  uninteresting !  With 
what   delight  does   one  welcome   a  broken  diversified 

*  I  know  no  way  of  escape  from  Goldsmith  in  a  diacussion  of  this  sort, 
except  by  deliberately  ignoring  the  best  that  has  been  said;  and  I  take 
some  comfort  from  a  charge  of  excessive  admiration  for  one  who  has  been 
described  as  "  a  second-rate  poet  and  an  obsolete  philosopher "  in  the 
reflection  that  his  bi-centonary  is  not  far  off,  and  that  I  may  yet  see  She 
Stoops  to  Conquer  and  The  Oood-natured  Man  running  simultaneously  in 
New  York,  new  and  handsome  editions  of  his  works  (including  even  the 
Animated  Nature  that  used  to  delight  my  youth)  at  the  bookshops  and  a 
fairer  estimate  of  him  generally  arrived  at.  The  Atlantic  Monthly  will 
give  him  a  laudatory  article,  I  am  sure,  and  he  may  even  receive  a  pat  on 
the  head  from  the  Nation. 


258  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

prospect  again!  How  jubilantly  tlie  mountains  soar, 
how  they  ''skip  like  rams,  and  the  little  hills  like  young 
sheep"  when  one  returns  to  them  after  long  sojourn 
amidst  these  plains! — how  smilingly  the  valleys  nestle 
against  them,  how  bravely  the  sturdy  trees  wave  their 
banners  as  they  march  up  the  slopes ! 

So  I  think  does  human  society  of  a  civilized  kind  pre- 
sent itself  to  the  eye  that  has  long  contemplated  the 
sterile  communism  of  the  Eskimos.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  visit  cities  to  feel  the  contrast ;  a  book  from  the  scanti- 
est Arctic  library,  a  reproduction  of  a  fine  picture,  a 
graphophone  record  of  good  music,  a  clever  letter  from 
an  interesting  correspondent  (there  are  yet  such,  though 
they  grow  very  rare),  will  bring  it  vividly  to  one's 
mind.  Here  on  the  log  wall  is  a  cheap  coloured  repro- 
duction of  one  of  Moran's  pictures  of  Venice.  I  have 
never  inhabited  palaces  and  never  expect  to,  have  not 
even  the  slightest  desire  to,  yet  I  am  glad  that  there 
are  such  dwellings  in  the  world;  I  have  no  craving  for 
state  and  splendour,  yet  I  am  glad  that  there  is  sumptu- 
ousness  in  the  world,  glad  that  all  living  is  not  sordid  and 
meagre,  or  even  commonplace;  without  aspiring  to  be 
distinguished  I  am  yet  glad  that  there  is  distinction.  I 
rejoice  that  there  are  great  cathedrals  and  castles  that 
I  may  gaze  upon  and  wander  through,  and  for  my  uses, 
for  the  gratification  of  my  love  of  beauty  and  dignity,  the 
*' temples  and  palaces"  are  as  much  mine  as  they  are 
their  owners'.  I  rejoice  that  some  of  the  grace  and 
power  of  past  generations  has  been  stored  up  in  these 
structures  for  my  delectation,  as  water  is  impounded  by 
dams,  instead  of  wholly  wasting  itself  without  memorial 
in  the  currents  of  contemporary  living.  I  think  that  a 
civilization  which  has  produced  these  splendid  inequali- 
ties, to  deal  with  material  things  only,  is  more  desirable 
than  the  dead  Eskimo  level  which  seems  to  be  the  ideal 
of  many  today,  an  ideal  for  which  they  would  be  content 
to  destroy  every  vestige  of  the  other.  Its  attendant  evils 
I  am  not  blind  to  and  would  strain  every  nerve  to  miti- 


THE  NORTHERN  EXTREME  259 

gate,  but  with  all  its  evils  it  seems  to  me  preferable. 
And  if  it  be  that,  save  in  an  Eskimo  condition, 

"Just  experience  tells,  in  every  soil, 
That  those  who  think  must  govern  those  who  toil. ' ' 

I  have  no  particular  quarrel  with  that  either.  And  so  a 
farewell  to  ''poor  Noll,"  which  is  difficult  for  me  without 
a  farewell  to  the  subject,  and  to  our  travels  again. 


VII 
POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND 


VII 

POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND 

On  the  morning  of  the  15th  March,  when  we  had  eaten 
breakfast  and  packed  up  and  Walter  and  George  were 
dickering  for  more  dog-feed  with  an  old  woman  who 
sought  to  make  the  best  market  for  her  walrus  meat,  I 
walked  out  again  the  five  or  six  hundred  yards  to  the  end 
of  the  spit,  accompanied  by  my  little  troop  of  yesterday. 
In  the  sunshine  the  precise  most  northerly  point  seemed 
more  indeterminate  than  on  the  previous  evening;  ice- 
covered  land  and  ice-covered  water  more  difficult  to  dis- 
tinguish ;  and  even  the  sunshine  made  the  scene  scarcely 
less  desolate  and  dreary. 

At  8.45  we  were  started  upon  our  adventure  of  the 
north  coast,  and  all  day  pursued  our  journey  upon  sand- 
spits  or  on  the  snow  of  the  lagoon  (with  which  George 
had  never  heard  Elson's  name  connected).  There  had 
been  a  good  trail  until  recently,  but  a  storm  had  over- 
spread it  with  soft  snow  and  the  going  was  rather  heavy. 
After  four  hours  we  reached  an  inhabited  igloo  and  had 
lunch,  another  four  hours  brought  us  to  a  deserted  igloo, 
and  there  we  camped  for  the  night,  without  much  com- 
fort. This  lagoon  of  Elson's,  opening  presently  into  the 
Dease  Inlet,  is  bordered  all  along  its  ocean  side  by  a  chain 
of  sandbars  and  broken  islands,  upon  which,  in  the  main, 
we  travelled.  Into  Dease  Inlet  a  number  of  rivers  empty, 
the  two  most  important  of  which  have  received  names, 
one,  the  Chipp,  for  the  lieutenant  of  that  name  who  per- 
ished with  De  Long  (so  named  by  Stoney  after  Howard's 
return,  overlaying  its  Eskimo  name  of  Ik-pik-puk,  as  he 
vainly  tried  to  overlay  ''Kobuk"  with  "Putnam"),  and 
the  other  the  Meade,  named  by  Ray  of  the  circumpolar 
station,  presumably  for  an  admiral  of  the  U.  S.  navy 

263 


264  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

who  was  engaged  at  one  time  in  survey  work  in  south- 
west Alaska,  and  is  there  also  conunemorated.  Locally 
the  names  are  not  used  by  white  men  or  natives;  they 
are  map-names. 

The  next  morning  snow  was  falling  when  we  started, 
with  a  wind  from  the  southwest.  For  awhile  the  sun 
struggled  through  the  snow,  but  was  gradually  obscured 
to  complete  disappearance,  and  we  were  enshrouded  in 
mist,  and  from  that  time  forward  we  saw  literally  noth- 
ing all  day.  From  George's  statement  and  from  the 
chart  it  seemed  that  we  were  at  Tangent  Point,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  inlet,  and  here  we  dug  out  the  entrance 
to  an  old  igloo  and  camped. 

In  the  utter  monotony  of  this  travel  I  took  some  amuse- 
ment from  George  and  his  team  just  ahead  of  me.  His 
dogs'  harness  was  based  upon  gunny  sacking,  strips  of 
which,  covered  with  strips  from  a  flour  sack,  made  the 
traces.  The  strips  from  the  flour  sacks  had  been  cut 
so  that  the  advertising  legend  of  the  sack  ran  right  along 
the  trace;  a  black  dog  bore  the  label  ''unbleached,"  and 
a  dirty  yellow  dog  announced  himself  as  of  ''the  rich 
cream  colour  that  nature  intended. ' '  Evidently  the  main 
native  consumption  at  Point  Barrow  is  of  a  second-rate 
flour  which  thus  makes  a  virtue  of  being  off-colour.  But 
the  rich-cream-colour-that-nature-intended  dog  happened 
to  match  his  placard  ludicrously  and  seemed  to  acknowl- 
edge the  compliment.  "Unbleached"  I  thought  bore  his 
with  more  defiant  air,  a  black  dog  who  cared  not  who 
knew  it. 

George  himself  was  of  interest.  As  I  have  said,  he  was 
an  "elder"  in  the  local  church,  yet  he  permitted  himself 
a  freedom  of  speech  not  at  all  in  keeping  with  that  char- 
acter. Judging  that  the  young  man  had  picked  up  certain 
common  white  man's  phrases  without  thinking  about 
their  meaning,  or  indeed  without  recognizing  their  mean- 
ing, for  his  English  was  halting  and  meagre,  I  spoke  to 
him  kindly  about  it  and  told  him  that  words  like  "hell" 
and  "damn"  did  not  come  fittingly  from  his  lips.    He 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND  265 

seemed  really  obliged  to  me,  and  I  am  sure  that  it  was  as 
I  had  judged,  for  he  made  every  effort  to  cast  them  off. 
But  it  is  not  easy  to  drop  habits  of  speech  all  at  once,  and 
for  a  day  or  two  he  was  like  St.  Augustine  after  his  con- 
version, continually  thrusting  his  fist  in  his  mouth. 
Sometimes  his  efforts  to  check  himself  were  funny.  I 
had  told  him  that  instead  of  cursing  his  dogs  and  con- 
demning them  to  eternal  punishment,  it  would  do  just 
as  well  to  praise  them,  and  on  the  next  day  when  he  had 
occasion  for  objurgation  he  broke  out  with  ' '  Damn ' '  and 
changed  suddenly  to  ''Good  dogs!'*  I  thought  of  In- 
goldsby's  Prince-Bishop,  who 

" .    .    .  muttered  a  curse  and  a  prayer, 
"Which  his  double  capacity  hit  to  a  nicety; 
His  princely  or  lay  part  induced  him  to  swear, 
His  episcopal  moiety  said  '  Benedicite. '  ' ' 

(with  the  long  i  of  the  English  ecclesiastical  usage  in  the 
last  word  as  befits  the  authorship  of  a  canon  of  St. 
Paul's);  and  I  was  glad  that  the  ''elder"  was,  in 
speech  at  least,  "breaking  even"  with  the  dog-musher, 
and  might  presently  hope  to  supersede  him  alto- 
gether. 

The  particular  occasion  of  this  incident  remains  in- 
delibly in  my  memory.  A  poor  beast  of  a  dog,  frozen  to 
death  by  what  mischance  I  know  not,  but  his  gaunt  con- 
dition indicating  that  under-nourishment  was  a  contribut- 
ing cause,  had  been  picked  up  and  set  on  its  feet  in  the 
snow  by  the  side  of  the  trail — a  grim  Eskimo  joke — and 
there  remained,  and  every  dog  of  the  three  teams  had  to 
stop  and  sniff  at  the  body. 

Once  again  I  had  impressed  upon  me  the  paramouncy 
of  the  dog's  sense  of  smell  amongst  all  his  senses.  Every 
dog  saw  this  poor  frozen  carcass  grotesquely  standing  up 
in  the  snow,  and  could  tell  just  as  surely  as  I  could — 
and  I  could  tell  it  as  far  as  I  could  see  it — that  the 
dog  was  dead.  Yet  every  dog  went  up  with  the  greatest 
eagerness  and  excitement,  straining  at  the  harness,  and 


266  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

not  until  he  liad  stopped  and  sniffed  did  his  interest 
disappear.  And  yet  there  are  those  who  confidently 
maintain  that  dogs  reason,  and  grow  very  knowing  and 
superior  when  one  talks  about  instinct.  Much  of  my 
interest  in  Fabre's  delightful  insect  books  arises  from 
his  clear  and  demonstrative  differentiation  between  these 
faculties,  and  all  my  experience  as  a  life-long  animal 
lover  leads  me  to  hold  that  they  are  not  merely  different 
in  degree  but  different  in  kind. 

Once  I  had  occasion  to  read  everything  that  I  could 
lay  my  hand  on  with  regard  to  the  sense  of  smell,  and  I 
found  that  there  is  virtually  nothing  known  about  it.  I 
do  not  believe  that  there  is  any  hypothesis  as  to  its 
modus  operandi  that  is  tenable,  and  the  prevailing  belief 
that  the  olfactory  nerves  are  excited  by  minute  particles 
flying  off  from  odoriferous  substances  is  to  my  mind 
absurd.  That  a  grain  of  musk  should  give  off  such  par- 
ticles from  the  days  of  Marie  Antoinette  until  now,  and 
lose  no  weight  thereby,  is  utterly  incredible  to  me.  What 
infinite  minuteness  of  subdivision  it  involves!  What 
astonishing  potency  in  the  particle!  What  ceaseless 
rapidity  of  ejaculation !  Nothing  but  the  emanations  of 
radium  seem  to  be  in  the  same  class  with  it,  and  I  should 
not  be  surprised  if  it  turned  out  by  and  by  that  a  whole 
series  of  activities,  as  unknown  to  science  today  as  the 
activities  of  radium  were  unknown  fifty  years  ago,  are 
involved.  Let  him  who  is  disposed  to  smile  at  this 
excursus  into  science  read  all  there  is  to  read  (it  is  not 
much)  about  the  sense  of  smell. 

I  should  like  to  pursue  it :  I  should  like  to  discuss  the 
peculiar  effect  of  cold  upon  smell,  whereby  most  odours 
are  killed  to  the  human  nostrils  though  not  even,  it  would 
seem,  weakened  to  the  canine  nostril.  Kerawak  smelled 
that  star  fish  under  the  snow  at  Point  Hope,  though, 
frozen  as  it  was,  to  my  nose  it  had  no  perceptible  odour 
whatever.  I  stopped  and  smelled  the  dead  dog  on  the 
trail  and  it  had  no  odour  at  all,  in  the  cold  and  the  wind : 
yet  to  the  dogs  it  smelled  decisively,  I  suppose;  though 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND  267 

of  course  it  may  have  been  the  absence  of  smell  that  was 
decisive :  but  I  think  not. 

But  this  book  grows  too  long  already  and  we  must 
go  on. 

A  willing,  good-natured  and  sufficiently  capable  fellow 
we  found  George,  his  white  blood  appearing  more  evi- 
dently in  his  looks  than  in  aught  else,  and  I  was  sorry 
that  the  son  of  a  white  father  had  not  had  better  chance  of 
education  and  intellectual  development.  Walter  soon 
had  him  saying  "please"  and  "thank  you,"  and  in  his 
quiet,  laughing  way  effected  improvements  in  his  deport- 
ment which  I  do  not  know  that  he  would  have  bothered 
about  but  for  the  tie  of  the  mixed  blood  between  them. 

"We  reached  Cape  Simpson,  named  for  the  famous  gov- 
ernor of  the  rejuvenated  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  a 
cousin  of  our  exploring  Simpson,  about  three  in  the  after- 
noon, and  having  dug  up  from  the  snow  a  sufficient  supply 
of  driftwood  to  cook  dog-food,  and  loaded  it  upon  the 
sled  (our  walrus  meat  done),  we  started  across  Smith 
Bay,  named  by  the  same  men  for  a  chief  factor  of  the 
same  company.  Cape  Simpson  is  interesting  as  the 
"boat  extreme"  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  party.  It  was  here 
that  Simpson  left  Dease  and  half  the  crew  and  advanced 
on  foot  with  six  men,  one  of  whom  had  been  with  Sir  John 
Franklin  in  1826  and  two  with  Sir  George  Back  on  the 
Great  Fish  river  in  1834. 

Brilliant  sunshine  had  again  given  place  to  a  snow- 
storm, and  when  that  ceased  and  the  sky  cleared  the 
thermometer  dropped  to  30°  below  zero.  We  made  no 
more  than  six  or  seven  miles  on  the  sea-ice,  which  was 
very  rough,  and  then  stopped  for  the  night;  our  first 
night  without  an  habitation  for  shelter.  Walter  had 
made  a  tiny  tent  at  Point  Barrow  and  demurred  at 
the  time  it  would  take  to  build  a  snow-house,  so  we 
pitched  it  and  walled  it  round  with  snow  blocks  and 
camped  therein.  We  were  miserably  crowded;  only  one 
man  could  do  anything  at  a  time,  so  that  it  was  as  well  the 
two  of  them  were  outdoors  cooking  dog-feed  while  I  pre- 


268  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

pared  our  supper.  And  it  was  cold.  We  had  been  ad- 
vised to  rely  upon  our  two  primus  stoves,  but  had  been 
better  advised  had  we  brought  a  small  woodstove,  for 
excellent  as  the  primus  is  for  cooking  it  is  a  poor 
dependence  for  warmth.  It  was  so  cold  after  sup- 
per that  the  ink  froze  as  it  issued  from  my  fountain 
pen  and  the  day's  record  remained  unfinished  till  the 
morrow. 

The  next  day  brought  the  bitter  northeast  wind  that 
we  were  to  endure  nearly  all  the  rest  of  the  time  on  this 
coast.  I  was  never  colder  in  my  life  all  day  long  than 
I  was  that  day  when  we  finished  the  crossing  of  Smith 
Bay  and  reached  an  empty  igloo  west  of  Pitt  Point — 
named  for  the  statesman,  one  supposes,  though  Simpson 
does  not  say.  My  little  new  sled  was  a  most  convenient 
vehicle,  and  as  far  as  easy  travelling  went  it  was  beyond 
comparison  better  than  the  common  run  of  travel  in  the 
interior.  I  had  but  to  step  upon  the  runners  and  ride 
whenever  I  was  so  minded.  But  the  keen  wind  at  from 
20°  to  30°  below  zero  all  day  took  all  pleasure  from  it; 
one's  nose  was  continually  frozen,  or  if  a  scarf  were  em- 
ployed it  was  soon  a  solidly  frozen  mass  from  the  con- 
densation of  the  breath. 

From  the  cabin  west  of  Pitt  Point  we  reached,  as  we 
supposed,  Cape  Halkett  the  next  day,  after  an  exceed- 
ingly long,  cold  run.  The  chart,  I  was  sure,  was  in  error, 
making  Smith  Bay  too  broad  and  misplacing  Pitt  Point, 
if  our  igloo  to  the  west  of  it  had  indeed  been  near  it  at 
all — and  we  discovered  later  that  it  was  so.  I  am  sure 
our  run  of  the  19th  March  was  upwards  of  forty  miles, 
and  should  be  disposed  to  call  it  forty-five.  I  had  in- 
creased my  clothing  and  my  body  was  warmer,  but  the 
wind,  with  a  temperature  steadily  growing  lower,  was 
bitter  in  the  extreme. 

We  were  exceedingly  fortunate  in  finding  a  large,  oc- 
cupied igloo  at  Cape  Halkett  (Halkett  was  another  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  director),  and  never  was  sight  of 
smoke  more  welcome  to  weary,  half-frozen  travellers. 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND  269 

Billy  came  out  and  insisted  on  my  going  immediately 
within,  himself  taking  my  place  in  the  unhitching  and 
unloading,  and  when  I  still  lingered  to  assist  he  said, 
''You  stay  outside,  me  go  in" — and  I  was  really  nothing 
loath  to  yield  to  his  insistence.  Now  here  was  the  grand 
scamp  of  all  the  Kobuk  Eskimos,  an  old  acquaintance  of 
mine,  who  knew  that  I  knew  all  about  him,  knew  that  I 
had  recently  put  a  spoke  in  the  wheel  of  a  nefarious  at- 
tempt of  his  at  bigamy,  by  telling  the  commissioner  at 
Point  Barrow  that  he  already  had  a  wife  on  the  Koyukuk 
river.  I  had  not  been  in  time  to  prevent  Mr.  Brower 
from  being  victimized  by  him.  Pretending  to  have  money 
on  deposit  in  a  Fairbanks  bank,  he  had  bought  several 
hundred  dollars'  worth  of  goods  and  had  paid  for  them 
with  a  draft  that  Mr.  Brower  was  hoping  would  be  hon- 
oured. However,  I  never  waste  much  sympathy  with  a 
trader  who  allows  himself  to  be  imposed  on  in  any  such 
way.  Some  little  doubt  I  had  had,  when  I  found  my  pro- 
vision of  cash  running  short,  not  so  much  whether  Mr. 
Brower  would  accept  a  draft  in  payment  for  supplies,  as 
whether  I  had  any  right  to  ask  him  to,  coming  without 
commercial  introduction,  but  here  was  Billy,  unable  to  get 
a  dollar's  worth  of  credit  on  the  Kobuk  or  Koyukuk  riv- 
ers, coming  up  here  and  just ' '  on  his  face, ' '  as  they  say, 
getting  three  or  four  hundred  dollars '  worth  at  a  stroke ; 
a  regular  Eskimo  chevalier  of  industry.  He  had  lived  the 
winter  upon  this  resource  and  had  gotten  him  much  hon- 
our amongst  the  Eskimos  as  a  rich  man  who  entertained 
generously. 

Long  ago  I  had  been  enabled  to  do  Billy  a  service. 
When  first  it  was  decided  to  extend  the  reindeer  enter- 
prise to  the  interior  country  (from  which  it  was  very 
shortly  withdrawn  again)  a  herd  had  been  taken  across 
country  from  Unalaklik  on  Norton  Sound  to  the  upper 
Koyukuk  river,  and  Billy  had  spent  the  winter  as  guide 
for  the  migration.  By  some  neglect  he  had  not  been  paid, 
and  when  a  year  or  two  later  he  succeeded  in  getting 
someone  to  make  application  for  payment,  there  were  no 


270  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

funds  available  and  the  matter  seemed  to  have  be^n  en- 
tirely forgotten  in  the  bureau  at  Washington.  I  took  it 
up  and  had  some  correspondence  about  it  and  at  last 
succeeded  in  getting  him  paid  in  reindeer,  since  there  was 
no  money  that  could  be  used.  This  must  have  been  ten 
or  twelve  years  ago.  But  Billy  had  gone  from  bad  to 
worse ;  whenever  there  was  liquor  to  be  had  he  was  drunk ; 
whenever  he  could  find  another  native  with  money  he 
would  gamble ;  he  had  taken  his  wife  to  the  mining  camp 
and  left  her  there,  and  there  I  had  seen  her  a  year  be- 
fore ;  a  thoroughly  demoralized,  plausible,  good-humoured 
scamp  of  an  Eskimo  with  no  more  conscience  than  a 
cat — the  worst  sort  of  ''wised-up"  native,  whose  associa- 
tion with  miners  on  the  Koyukuk,  and  especially  with 
those  amongst  them  who  seek  the  intimacy  of  the  natives, 
had  ruined  a  character  that  one  supposes  was  not  very 
difficult  to  ruin. 

Saint  or  sinner,  however,  the  duties  of  hospitality  are 
sacred  in  the  Arctic,  and  are  acknowledged  and  dis- 
charged when  all  other  obligations  have  long  since  been 
repudiated,  and  Billy  was  most  cordial  and  helpful,  and 
we  were  very  thankful  of  the  relief  which  his  kindness 
afforded. 

Towards  the  spring,  at  the  close  of  the  trapping  sea- 
son, the  Colville  river  people  gather  at  a  little  village 
some  thirty  or  forty  miles  above  the  mouth,  and  the 
trader  at  Point  Barrow  sends  a  load  of  grub  and  ammuni- 
tion to  barter  for  their  furs.  Billy  was  thus  employed, 
Mr.  Brower  perhaps  hoping  partly  to  recoup  himself 
for  a  debt  of  which  he  w^as  already  grown  doubtful  be- 
fore we  came,  and  it  was  his  trail  that  we  had  been 
following,  the  second  human  being  we  had  met  since 
leaving  Niiwuk — the  other  an  Eskimo  gathering  up  his 
traps.  I  took  opportunity  to  "deal"  with  Billy,  as  I  had 
dealt  with  him  often  before.  He  denied  the  attempted 
bigamy  in  a  half-hearted  sort  of  way,  and  stoutly  main- 
tained that  he  had  money  at  Fairbanks,  though  I  knew 
that  the  one  was  fact  and  vehemently  suspected  that 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND  271 

the  other  was  fiction.  I  told  Billy  that  when  a  man  began 
forging  drafts  he  was  already  within  sight  of  a  long  term 
of  imprisonment,  and  tried  to  make  him  understand  the 
gravity  of  the  offence  in  the  eyes  of  the  law.  And  I 
pleaded  with  him  to  live  a  straight  life  instead  of  a 
crooked  one,  invoking  his  accountability,  not  only  to  the 
law  but  to  God.  Billy  was  moved  by  what  I  said,  entirely 
submissive  and  very  penitent ;  but  not  penitent  enough  to 
tell  the  truth  about  the  draft,  so  that  I  began  to  think  that 
I  was  possibly  mistaken  and  that  the  rambling  and  in- 
coherent explanation  he  attempted  of  some  windfall  in 
connection  with  a  mining  operation  might  have  founda- 
tion. Strange  things  happen  in  placer  mining,  and  were 
there  not  at  that  time  in  Point  Barrow  two  young  Eski- 
mos who  had  cleared  a  thousand  dollars  or  so  apiece  by 
working  a  claim  on  shares  in  the  Chandelar  country?  If 
I  had  not  knowTi  Billy  so  well  I  might  have  taken  his  word 
for  it,  even  as  Mr.  Brower. 

I  tried  hard  to  get  the  truth  out  of  him.  I  made  him  the 
offer  (which  I  had  really  no  right  to  make)  that  if  he 
would  go  back  to  Mr.  Brower  and  tell  him  all  about  it, 
and  confess  that  he  had  obtained  the  credit  fraudulently 
and  do  his  best  to  make  it  good,  and  would  then  return  to 
the  Koyukuk  and  take  Kitty  away  from  the  mining  camp 
and  try  to  live  decently  with  her,  I  would  stand  between 
him  and  any  trouble  and  would  assume  what  remained  of 
his  indebtedness.  I  told  him  I  would  give  him  a  letter  to 
Mr.  Brower  undertaking  to  do  so.  But  Billy  was  obdu- 
rate, and  so  it  was  left ;  and  the  next  summer  Mr.  Brower 
wrote  to  me  that  Billy  had  gone  back  to  the  Kobuk  on  a 
supply  ship — and  that  the  draft  had  been  dishonoured.  I 
have  just  heard  that  he  has  since  spent  three  months  in 
gaol  for  a  theft  of  skins  and  I  should  not  be  surprised  to 
hear  of  him  drifting  to  the  eastward,  to  the  Coronation 
Gulf  country,  now  that  nothing  remains  in  Alaska  where 
he  is  unknown.  That  seems  the  present  goal  of  those  who 
have  worn  out  their  character  and  credit  everywhere 
else.    And  I  fancy  that  the  Northwest  Mounted  Police 


272  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

will  by  and  by  make  short  work  with  Billy,  when  he  has 
done  sufficient  harm. 

Meanwhile  we  greatly  appreciated  his  hospitality  and 
made  our  day  of  rest  at  Cape  Halkett ;  the  thermometer 
dropping  the  first  night  to  — 47°,  and  the  second  to 
—  51  ° ;  much  the  coldest  weather  we  had  had  on  the  Arctic 
coast.  Before  us  lay  the  expanse  of  Harrison  Bay,  some 
fifty  miles  across,  with  the  necessity  of  camping  on  the 
ice,  and  of  carefully  directing  our  course  to  make  a 
proper  passage  to  Beechey  Point,  neither  veering  too 
much  to  the  left  to  the  Arctic  Ocean,  nor  too  much  to 
the  right  to  the  delta  of  the  Colville.  The  passage  of  this 
bay  we  had  been  taught  to  regard  as  the  most  ticklish 
piece  of  the  whole  north  coast  journey,  the  natives  usu- 
ally skirting  around  the  coast  line  instead  of  striking 
across. 

Harrison  Bay  was  named  by  Dease  and  Simpson  for 
Benjamin  Harrison,  the  deputy-governor  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company,  ''whose  attention  had  been  so  long  sedu- 
lously directed  to  the  moral  and  religious  improvement  of 
the  natives  of  the  Indian  country,"  an  honourable  distinc- 
tion among  trading  officials  of  any  sort,  which  makes  one 
glad  that  his  name  is  thus  remembered.  I  have  vainly 
searched  the  two  histories  of  the  Great  Company  that  I 
possess  for  any  trace  of  Harrison  save  that  he  was 
deputy-governor  of  the  company  from  1835  to  1839. 

EUice  Point,  which  it  turned  out  next  day  we  were 
much  nearer  to  than  Cape  Halkett,  is  named  for  ''the 
Right  Honourable  Edward  Ellice,"  of  whom  I  find  that  he 
was  a  member  of  Parliament  (presumably  a  privy  coun- 
cillor from  his  "right  honourable"),  that  it  was  largely 
due  to  his  mediatory  efforts  that  the  long,  disastrous 
rivalry  between  the  Hudson's  Bay  and  the  North  West 
Companies  was  brought  to  an  end  by  the  amalgamation 
in  1821,  and  that  later  in  life,  when  he  was  deputy- 
governor  of  the  company  (from  1858  to  1863),  he  was 
known  as  "the  old  bear."  Of  Halkett,  I  can  find 
nothing  but  that  he  was  one  of  the  company's  directors, 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND  273 

and  that  there  was  a  post  named  for  him  on  the  Liard 
river. 

The  expeditions  of  Dease  and  Simpson  carried  out 
by  the  direction  and  at  the  expense  of  the  Hudson's  Bay- 
Company,  while  they  constitute  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
chapters  of  American  exploration  and  have  not,  I  think, 
had  the  fame  and  recognition  they  deserve,  do  not  really 
redound  so  much  to  the  credit  of  the  company  as  might  at 
first  appear.  One  of  the  obligations  of  ''The  Governor 
and  Company  of  Adventurers  of  England  trading  into 
Hudson's  Bay"  in  the  original  charter  of  Charles  II  is 
that  of  exploration.  ''The  discovery  of  a  new  passage 
into  the  South  Sea"  is  set  down  as  the  first  purpose  of  the 
company,  and  it  is  because  they  "have  already  made 
such  discoveries  as  to  encourage  them  to  proceed  further 
in  pursuance  of  their  said  design"  that  "the  sole  trade 
and  commerce  of  all  those  seas,  straits,  bays,  lakes, 
rivers,"  etc.,  is  granted  to  them.  Dissatisfaction  had 
often  found  expression  in  England  with  the  supineness 
of  the  company  in  this  direction,  and  now  that  it  was  con- 
templating an  application  to  parliament  for  an  extension 
or  confirmation  of  its  privileges,  it  desired  to  fortify  it- 
self by  some  "further  pursuance"  of  the  "said  design," 
which,  after  two  or  three  abortive  attempts,  it  had  en- 
tirely forgotten  and  neglected  for  a  century. 

One  of  the  things  much  needed  today  is  a  full,  critical 
history  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  Dr.  George 
Bryce  *  has  done  valuable  condensed  work,  following 
Beckles  Wilson  f  of  a  decade  earlier  (though  both  of 
them  have  furnished  their  books  with  indexes  that  are  a 
mere  exasperation),  but  the  great  mass  of  material  en- 
shrouded in  the  company's  archives  is  scarcely  touched, 
and  now  that  there  can  be  no  valid  reason  for  keeping  it 
secret,  should  afford  a  rich  mine  for  research.  I  have 
hoped  that  Miss  Agnes  Laut  would  develop  a  sufficiently 
scholarly  temper  to  undertake  it,  having  already  dipped 

*  Remarkable  History  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  New  York,  1910. 
t  Th9  Great  Company,  New  York,  1899. 


274  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

into  the  records,  but  she  remains  wedded  to  her  shocks 
and  thrills,  and  the  deep  damnation  of  the  word  ''popu- 
lar" still  affixes  itself  to  the  titles  of  her  books  in  descrip- 
tive catalogues.  My  hope  now,  if  not  for  the  history  it- 
self, for  the  materials  thereof,  lies  chiefly  with  the  Cham- 
plain  Society,  and  perhaps  no  history  is  possible  until  the 
records  have  been  independently  edited  and  published. 
If  fifteen  years  of  constant  travel  had  been  spent  in 
Rupert's  Land,  if  there  were  prospect  of  five  years'  free, 
undisturbed  digging  at  the  Hudson's  Bay  House  and  the 
British  Museum,  the  attempt  at  the  compilation  of  such 
an  history  would  not  be  without  its  attractions  for  the 
leisurely  evening  of  life,  as  it  would  certainly  be  worth 
while. 

The  whole  distribution  of  the  land  on  this  northerly 
coast  was  very  erroneously  indicated  by  the  chart  we 
were  following.  Measured  on  its  scale,  the  distance  from 
Pitt  Point  to  Cape  Halkett  was  about  twenty-five  miles ; 
we  had  travelled  at  least  forty,  and  yet  next  day  dis- 
covered, as  I  have  said,  that  the  igloo  at  which  we  stayed 
with  Billy  was  some  distance  west  of  the  cape.  It  took  us 
three  more  hours  to  reach  the  unmistakable  headland 
with  its  pole  beacon,  which  marks  the  western  boundary 
of  Harrison  Bay.  For  an  hour  we  stayed  here,  digging 
up  driftwood  from  the  snow  and  piling  our  sleds  high, 
with  it.  ''Many  woods  here  last  summer,  now  all  lost," 
said  George,  as  we  went  prodding  about  through  the  hard 
snow  to  discover  our  fuel,  in  the  bright  sunshine  with 
little  wind;  one  of  the  few  pleasant  recollections  I  have  of 
this  coast.  Some  names  carved  on  the  beacon  recording 
a  passage  of  the  previous  year  from  the  Koyukuk  by  way 
of  the  Colville  had  aroused  my  interest ;  a  brass  plate  on 
a  stump,  evidence  of  recent  surveys  of  which  more  later, 
had  increased  it.  Cape  Halkett  is  a  real  cape,  rising 
twelve  or  fifteen  feet  above  the  surrounding  country,  and 
any  such  eminence  is  conspicuous  and  even  comforting 
amidst  the  awful  flatness  and  sameness  of  this  coast. 

Then,  having  taken  a  compass  direction  and  carefully 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXI^IAN  ISLAND  275 

noticed,  according  to  our  instructions,  the  trend  of  the 
snow-furrows  and  the  angle  at  which  we  should  cross 
them  to  keep  our  course,  we  launched  upon  the  ice  of  Har- 
rison Bay,  intending  a  straight  line  of  fifty  miles  to 
Beechey  Point,  and  for  three  hours  pursued  it,  making 
perhaps  fourteen  miles.  That  night  we  built  our  first 
snow-house.  While  Walter  busied  himself  with  cooking 
the  dog-feed,  George  and  I  cut  slabs  of  hard  snow  along 
a  rectangle  that  he  divided  into  suitable  squares,  and  set 
them  up,  leaning  inwards,  one  row  upon  another.  We 
did  not  shape  the  thing  with  a  dome,  for  George  con- 
fessed little  skill  in  snow-house  building,  although  he 
told  me  that  if  his  wife  had  been  along  to  help  him  he 
could  have  done  much  better.  I  did  not  resent  this  asper- 
sion upon  my  assistance,  for  in  truth  I  found  it  almost 
impossible  to  extract  the  snow  blocks  when  they  were  cut, 
or  to  move  them  when  they  were  extracted,  without  break- 
ing them.  George  had  a  knack  of  twisting  them  along  on 
their  edges,  of  easing  and  humouring  them  into  place, 
that  I  tried  faithfully  but  unsuccessfully  to  imitate.  They 
squeaked  and  squealed,  those  blocks  of  snow,  as  he  swung 
them,  now  on  one  corner,  now  on  another,  and  sometimes 
the  sound  they  made  was  piercing,  but  he  got  them  into 
place.  When  the  walls  were  sufficiently  raised  and  the 
opening  they  enclosed  sufficiently  diminished  by  the  in- 
clination given  the  slabs,  the  little  tent  was  thrown  over 
all  and  held  in  place  by  further  blocks,  and  then  we  filled 
every  crack  and  cranny  with  loose  snow.  By  and  by, 
when  the  hole  was  cut  and  we  inside,  George  took  the 
lighted  primus  stove  and  sealed  any  remaining  interstices 
by  the  simple  method  of  melting  together  the  edges  of 
the  blocks. 

In  this  house  we  were  far  more  comfortable  than  in  the 
tent.  It  was  large  enough  in  the  middle  to  stand  upright 
in  and  to  give  room  for  moving  about  on  our  necessary 
occasions,  and  although  the  thermometer  went  down  to 
48°  below  zero  that  night,  we  were  fairly  warm  inside. 
Moreover  the  condensation  of  the  moisture  of  our  breath 


276  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

and  our  cooking  did  not  annoy  us  as  it  had  done  in  the 
tent. 

The  art  of  building  the  beehive  snow-house — a  reaUy 
skilful  and  beautiful  art — has  passed  from  these  western 
Eskimos.  Mr.  Stefansson  describes  it  and  illustrates  it 
as  still  practised  by  the  people  of  Coronation  Gulf  and 
Bathurst  Inlet,  in  that  interesting  and  valuable  book, 
My  Life  with  the  Eskimo,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  it  can 
be  made  entirely  cosy  and  comfortable  with  only  a  seal- 
oil  lamp  burning,  when  one  saw  how  greatly  our  own 
clumsy  and  imperfect  structure  improved  upon  a  tent. 
£rThe  next  day,  with  a  temperature  that  never  went 
above  — 25°,  we  had  the  bitter  northeast  wind  again  for 
eight  long-suifering  hours  and  the  building  of  the 
snow-house  took  nearly  two  hours  more.  The  cold  and 
the  loose  snow  together  began  to  give  the  dogs  sore  feet, 
and  putting  on  and  taking  off  a  number  of  pairs  of 
moccasins  added  to  our  daily  dog  work.  The  poor  brutes 
were  doing  ill  upon  their  rice  and  blubber;  it  went 
through  them  almost  unchanged.  As  I  realized  now,  they 
should  have  been  put  upon  that  diet  for  some  time  before 
we  left  Point  Barrow,  to  accustom  their  stomachs  and 
bowels  to  it.  Lying  at  such  low  temperatures  with  no 
possible  shelter  was  also  taking  toll  of  their  strength. 
To  tether  the  dogs  at  night  was  no  small  job.  They  were 
tied  in  pairs ;  two  dogs  that  got  along  with  one  another 
had  a  stick  passed  through  the  snaps  at  the  ends  of  their 
chains,  the  stick  carrying  the  two  chains  was  buried  in  a 
hole  dug  in  the  hard  snow  with  the  axe,  and  the  hole  was 
filled  and  tamped.  The  cooked  rice  and  blubber  was 
served  out  to  them  upon  the  snow.  That  night,  our 
driftwood  being  exhausted,  it  was  necessary  to  cook  the 
dog-feed  over  the  primus  stoves,  and  that  took  an  uncon- 
scionable long  time  and  consumed  a  great  deal  of  ojl) 

The  next  day  was  just  such  another;  the  minimum 
temperature  — 48°,  the  maximum  — 30°,  and  the  bitter 
northeast  wind  still  stronger.  I  had  not  worn  my  rein- 
deer breeches  since  leaving  Point  Barrow,  deeming  them 


POINT  BAEROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND         277 

unnecessary  in  March,  and  had  substituted  the  leather 
moosehide  breeches  which  I  wear  the  winter  through  in 
the  interior,  but  I  was  glad  to  put  the  fur  on  again  now, 
finding  much  inconvenience,  however,  in  the  absence  of 
pockets.  I  had  to  keep  pipe  and  handkerchief  in  the  hind- 
sack  of  the  sled,  where  they  promptly  froze  up.  Com- 
plete furs  alone  enable  one  to  stand  this  wind  at  low 
temperatures.  In  an  hour  and  a  half's  travel  we  made 
land,  and  we  were  buoyed  up  with  the  hope  that  we  were 
close  upon  Beechey  Point ;  but  it  was  not  so.  Despite  our 
efforts  to  keep  a  straight  course,  we  were  from  time  to 
time  conscious  that  the  dogs  deviated  from  it  and  we 
*' hawed"  them  back,  but  that  constant  tendency  to  incline 
away  from  the  course  mounts  up  and  tells.  Even  we  our- 
selves were  glad  to  turn  our  faces  from  the  miserable 
biting  wind,  and  so  had  gradually  edged  in  towards  the 
shore.  The  land  must  have  been  the  delta-outpost  of  the 
Colville  river,  which  we  should  have  given  a  wide  berth. 
So  we  turned  out  and  pursued  our  way,  constantly  ex- 
pecting to  make  land  again  and  find  driftwood,  but  by 
five  we  were  still  far  from  land  and  had  not  seen  a  piece 
of  wood,  and  had  to  camp  again  on  the  ice  and  cook  dog- 
feed  with  the  oil  stoves. 

Our  snow-houses  began  to  go  up  a  little  quicker  now, 
but  the  business  of  cooking  rice  for  twenty  dogs  on  two 
little  primus  stoves  was  exasperatingly  long,  and  our  coal 
oil  diminished  alarmingly.  I  began  to  be  uneasy  at  the 
prospect ;  much  more  than  half  the  oil  was  gone  and  we 
yet  a  long  way  from  having  completed  the  half  of  our 
journey. 

An  author  may  pretty  safely  assume  that  when  he  finds 
the  arraying  of  his  material  tedious,  the  reader  is  likely 
to  find  it  so  also ;  happy  would  he  be  if  he  could  as  safely 
assume  that  when  he  is  himself  interested  he  is  interest- 
ing. I  have  been  dividing  mud-banks  amongst  directors 
and  chief  factors  without  much  exaltation  of  spirit ;  now 
I  am  come  to  a  river  that  stirs  me. 

The  Colville  is  the  chief  river  of  northern  Alaska,  and 


278  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

one  of  tlie  considerable  rivers  of  the  whole  richly-rivered 
territory.  Its  headwaters  interlock  with  the  sources  of 
the  Noatak,  the  Kobuk,  and  the  Koyukuk,  and  it  has 
been  for  ages  the  means  of  intercourse  between  the  na- 
tives of  Kotzebue  Sound  and  the  whole  northern  coast. 
It  was  a  pre-historic  trade  route  by  which  the  natives  of 
the  Siberian  coast  exchanged  their  goods  with  natives  far 
to  the  eastward  of  Herschel  Island,  passing  from  tribe 
to  tribe,  back  and  forth.  But  it  has  interest  more  stimu- 
lating than  this.  Discovering  and  naming  this  river  in 
1837,  Simpson  made  a  report  to  his  superiors  that  was 
soon  the  common  property  of  all  the  "Hudson's  Bay 
Company's  servants,"  and  when  Alexander  Hunter 
Murray,  the  intelligent  and  accomplished  trader  who 
built  Fort  Yukon  in  1847,*  reached  the  middle  Yukon, 
he  felt  sure  that  it  was  the  same  river,  the  mouth  of 
which  Simpson  had  discovered  ten  years  before.  Indeed, 
twenty  years  later,  that  is  to  say,  thirty  years  after  the 
discovery,  W.  H.  Dall  and  his  companions,  arriving  at 
St.  Michael  to  begin  that  great  exploration  for  the 
Western  Union  Telegraph  Company  to  which  the  world 
owed  nearly  all  its  early  information  about  the  interior 
of  Alaska,  were  discussing  and  disputing  whether  the 
Yukon  and  the  Colville  were  the  same  river,  or  the  Yukon 
and  the  Kwikpak,  upon  which  last  they  were  about 
entering,  and  as  w^hich  the  Russians  knew  the  lower 
Yukon.  But  I  have  described  the  piecemeal  discovery 
of  the  Yukon  elsewhere. 

Again,  Simpson  named  this  river  for  Andrew  Colville, 
who  was  governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  from 
1852  to  1856,  and  Andrew  Colville  was  brother-in-law  to 
Thomas,  fifth  earl  of  Selkirk,  whose  name  shines  like  a 
star  amidst  the  murk  of  commercial  greed  and  unscrupu- 
lous rivalry  of  the  fur  companies;  of  all  the  Douglas 
clan  the  one  with  fairest  claim  to  be  called  "tender  and 


•  Sir  John  Richardson  was  largely  indebted  to  him  for  information, 
aad  the  spirited  coloured  sketches  of  natives  with  which  that  explorer's 
Arctic  Searching  Expedition  ia  illustrated  are  by  Murray's  hand. 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXIMAN  ISLAND  279 

true."  There  is,  I  think,  no  biography  of  Lord  Selkirk, 
yet  few  men  have  ever  lived  with  more  valid  claim  to 
commemoration.  Touched  and  distressed  by  the  wretched 
condition  of  the  Highland  crofters,  when 

"Opulence,  her  grandeur  to  maintain, 
Led  stern  depopulation  in  her  train," 

and  revolving  schemes  for  their  relief  by  emigration,  he 
expended  an  ample  patrimony  in  buying  up  the  shares  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  that  he  might  convert  the 
most  attractive  part  of  its  immense  domain  into  a  settle- 
ment for  these  evicted  peasants,  and  in  conducting  their 
emigration  to  the  Eed  river.  With  wonderful  resource- 
fulness and  energy  he  established  his  settlement  in  the 
heart  of  the  fertile  wilderness,  and  when  his  settlers 
had  been  driven  out  and  massacred,  marched  with  au- 
thority as  a  magistrate  and  a  company  of  soldiers  to  its 
re-establishment  and  the  punishment  of  the  brigands 
who  had  destroyed  it.  But  the  lawless  predatory  forces 
arrayed  against  him  proved  too  strong ;  the  profits  of  the 
fur  trade  too  great.  Denied  the  support  of  the  Canadian 
authorities  and  himself  the  victim  of  its  venal  courts, 
his  constitution  undermined  by  exertions  and  hardships. 
Lord  Selkirk  died  in  1820,  broken-hearted,  not  knowing 
that  his  settlement  had  at  last  entered  upon  a  period 
of  prosperity  and  that  he  had  laid  the  foundations  of  a 
great  commonwealth. 

The  name  philanthropist  has  been  shorn  of  much  of 
its  meaning  by  common  bestowal  upon  millionaire  trades- 
men who  fling  the  gold  of  their  superfluous  wealth  into 
the  treasury  of  charity;  Lord  Selkirk  spent  not  only  his 
possessions — he  spent  himself,  his  health  and  strength, 
his  courage,  his  foresight,  his  splendid  resolution,  his 
high-minded  singleness  of  purpose.  I  will  write  him  one 
who  loved  his  fellow  men  and  gave  himself  for  them; 
such  an  one,  it  is  pleasant  to  imagine,  as  that  young 
ruler  might  have  become  whom  our  Lord  looked  upon 


280  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

and  loved,  had  he  obeyed  the  command,  "  sell  whatso- 
ever thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  come,  take  up 
the  cross  and  follow  me." 

I  am  not  sure  if  the  name  of  Andrew  Colville  be  peg 
substantial  enough  to  hang  this  reference  upon,  for  I 
know  not  what  part  he  played  in  the  Ked  river  enter- 
prise beyond  that  he  was  a  supporter  as  well  as  a  brother- 
in-law  of  Lord  Selkirk.  It  was  his  good  judgment  that 
picked  out  young  George  (afterwards  Sir  George) 
Simpson,  for  nearly  forty  years  the  ''governor-in-chief 
of  Rupert's  Land,"  the  most  energetic  and  capable  ruler 
these  vast  territories  ever  had,  who  gathered  up  the 
broken  reins  of  authority  and  united  in  his  own  person 
the  hostile  loyalties  of  rival  partisans,  so  that  the  fur 
monopoly,  with  its  good  and  evil  features,  became  more 
powerful  than  ever  before. 

Whether  the  point  of  land  we  had  seen  the  previous 
day  were  Berens  Point  of  Simpson,  named  for  another 
Hudson's  Bay  governor,  or  Point  Oliktok  of  the  Eskimos, 
or  if  the  two  be  identical,  or  indeed  where  it  lies  at  all, 
I  am  quite  unable  to  say.  The  chart  we  were  following 
is  hopelessly  muddled  in  this  locality.  But  I  recall  that 
the  next  day,  still  travelling  in  low  temperature  against 
the  biting  wind,  we  had  our  first  glimpse  of  the  Franklin 
mountains  away  in  the  distance  to  the  south  of  east,  and 
were  greatly  cheered  and  elated  thereby.  It  was  fitting 
that  one  of  the  noblest  characters  in  the  whole  history 
of  exploration,  who  now  enters  upon  the  scene,  should 
be  thus  heralded  to  us,  and  the  naming  was  a  graceful 
tribute  of  Simpson  to  his  distinguished  predecessor. 

For  Beechey  Point,  which  we  actually  reached  at  noon 
on  the  24th,  and  where  we  saw  the  beacon  and  the  station 
mark  of  recent  surveys,  and  a  nameless  grave,  was  the 
farthest  point  within  Sir  John  Franklin's  vision  when 
he  was  compelled  to  turn  back  to  the  Mackenzie  from 
the  reef  known  as  Return  Reef.  He  named  it  on  the 
17th  August,  1826,  for  his  friend  Captain  Beechey.  Two 
days  before  Beechey  had  named  the  farthest  point  of 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND         281 

land  visible  from  the  Blossom  when  his  advance  was 
stopped  by  the  ice,  Franklin  Point,  after  his  friend  Cap- 
tain Franklin.  The  map  of  the  U.  S.  Geological  Sur- 
vey, the  best  map  of  Alaska  in  existence,  wrongly  calls 
the  point  '^Beecher";  the  generally  admirable  Geo- 
graphic Dictionary  of  Alaska  wrongly  identifies  it  with 
Simpson's  Point  Berens;  and  these  are  only  typical 
examples  of  the  confusion  and  inaccuracy  by  which  the 
whole  geography  of  this  coast  is  marked. 

We  were  already  experiencing  that  worst  annoyance  of 
Arctic  travellers,  the  accumulation  of  frozen  moisture 
upon  our  clothing.  The  low  temperature  and  the  keen 
wind  cover  everything  with  congealed  breath;  even  the 
mittens  and  gloves  gradually  become  stiff  with  it,  and 
little  by  little  the  bedding  absorbs  vapour  from  the  body. 
The  cooking  in  the  snow-huts  fills  the  air  with  steam, 
which  is  presently  condensed  into  moisture  and  frost  and 
settles  upon  everything.  Shortness  of  oil,  due  to  the 
unanticipated  use  of  it  for  cooking  dog-feed,  made  it 
necessary  to  extinguish  the  stove  as  soon  as  supper  was 
ready,  so  that  we  had  not  even  this  inadequate  instru- 
ment for  drying  our  stuff,  and  our  garments  must  be 
put  on  each  morning  encrusted  with  such  of  the  ice  of 
yesterday  as  could  not  be  beaten  off. 

At  Beechey  Point  we  loaded  up  with  wood  and  went 
on  for  four  or  five  hours  of  very  rough  travel  across  open 
ice  to  another  distant  point;  though  whether  we  crossed 
Gwydyr  Bay  of  Franklin,  or  were  merely  traversing  a 
lagoon  between  islands  and  the  mainland,  the  haze  which 
overspread  the  scene  prevented  us  from  knowing.  Wood 
piled  high  on  already  loaded  sleds  is  a  nuisance  in  any 
sort  of  rough  travel  and  calls  for  continual  readjust- 
ment and  resecuring,  but  we  could  take  no  chance  of 
lighting  upon  a  supply  when  the  approach  of  night 
brought  the  time  for  camping.  The  dogs  continued  to  do 
ill  on  their  ration  of  rice  and  blubber,  their  bodies  as- 
similating only  a  part,  though  an  increasing  part,  of  the 
nutriment  it  contained,  and  when  we  were  compelled  to 


282  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

cook  with  coal  oil  it  was  not  possible  to  prepare  a  full 
ration  for  twenty  dogs,  even  such  as  it  was.  They  were 
always  hungry;  hungrier  than  dogs  of  mine  ever  were 
before ;  and  it  was  distressing  to  see  their  distress  with 
no  means  of  relieving  it.  We  were  now  two  weeks  on 
our  journey,  with  only  one  day's  rest,  and  to  push  on 
with  all  possible  speed  was  still  our  only  course. 

The  next  day's  travel  must  have  taken  us  past  Re- 
turn Reef  and  Foggy  Island,  and  so  have  brought  us  well 
into  the  field  of  Franklin's  explorations.  It  was  his  de- 
tention of  eight  days  at  this  island,  during  which  the  fog 
lifted  two  or  three  times  just  enough  to  enable  him  to 
embark,  only  to  descend  again  and  compel  him  to  return, 
which  prevented  the  complete  success  of  the  joint  efforts 
of  himself  and  Beechey  to  determine  the  northwest  limits 
of  the  American  continent  at  a  stroke.  I  have  already 
said  that  had  this  undertaking  been  completely  success- 
ful I  think  it  would  stand  out  as  the  most  brilliant  of  all 
exploring  enterprises  that  ever  were  set  on  foot.  Noth- 
ing that  funds  and  foresight  could  provide  was  lacking; 
never  were  more  capable  commanders.  Beechey  did  his 
part  to  the  full,  and  beyond  the  full ;  only  this  eight  days' 
dense  fog  prevented  Franklin  from  accomplishing  his. 
Franklin  began  to  retrace  his  steps  on  the  18th  August. 
Elson  with  Beechey 's  barge  reached  Point  Barrow  on  the 
23rd,  five  days  later.  Had  Franklin  been  able  to  push 
uninterruptedly  on  after  the  18th  he  could  not  possibly 
have  made  the  160  miles  in  a  straight  line  that  lay  be- 
tween them  in  those  five  days,  judging  by  any  previous 
rate  of  travel ;  and  Elson  was  unable  to  wait  at  all ;  was, 
indeed,  just  barely  able  to  extricate  the  barge  from  the 
ice  and  make  good  his  retreat.  At  one  time  when  she 
was  driven  ashore  by  the  ice  he  had  made  all  arrange- 
ments to  sink  her  in  a  lagoon  that  she  might  not  become 
the  prey  of  the  natives,  and  to  endeavour  to  take  his 
party  back  on  foot  to  Kotzebue  Sound.  Franklin  could 
not  have  met  Elson.  Yet  he  says  that  could  he  have 
known  that  Beechey  had  penetrated  so  far  to  the  north, 


POINT  BARROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND         283 

nothing  should  have  stopped  him  pressing  forward.  He 
knew  that  Cook  had  been  unable  to  proceed  beyond  Icy 
Cape,  and  fully  expected  that  it  would  be  necessary  for 
his  own  party  to  go  on  to  the  general  rendezvous  at 
Kotzebue  Sound. 

As  a  schoolboy  with  a  highly  inflammable  imagination 
I  think  the  two  great  regrets  of  my  life  were  that  Prince 
Charles  Edward  turned  back  from  Derby  and  that  Frank- 
lin turned  back  from  Foggy  Island;  though  the  one  was 
doubtless  as  inevitable  as  the  other.  Yet  one  speculates 
and  wonders.  Beechey  cruised  about  in  Kotzebue  Sound 
until  the  27th  October ;  if  Franklin  had  been  able  to  reach 
Point  Barrow  at  all,  even  if  compelled  to  walk  around, 
and  by  the  aid  of  his  faithful  Eskimo  interpreter  Au- 
gustus had  been  able  to  procure  a  couple  of  native 
oomiaks,  he  might  possibly  have  reached  the  rendezvous 
before  Beechey 's  final  departure; — or  the  melancholy 
Search  which  stirred  the  world  might  have  been  antici- 
pated by  twenty  years.  One  remains  sorry,  however, 
that  such  an  excellently  well-laid  plan,  so  amply  provided, 
and  so  resolutely  put  to  the  execution,  should  have  failed 
of  entire  success. 

On  the  26th  we  must  have  passed  Franklin's  Prudhoe 
Bay  and  Yarborough  Inlet  and  camped  somewhere  near 
his  Anxiety  Point.  The  wind  had  swung  behind  us  and 
the  temperature  rose  so  that  our  progress  was  not  so 
painful,  but  by  night  the  one  was  back  in  its  old  quarter, 
and  the  other  fallen  to  —25°.  Whenever  the  haze  lifted 
Q-eorge  was  standing  on  top  of  his  sled  with  his  tele- 
scope at  his  eye.  But  we  really  saw  nothing ;  all  day  we 
had  not  even  a  glimpse  of  the  Franklin  mountains  that 
we  should  now  be  fully  abreast  of.  When  I  told  Walter 
that  night  that  we  must  be  in  the  close  neighbourhood  of 
Franklin's  Anxiety  Point,  he  said,  "I  don't  think  he 
was  half  as  anxious  as  I  am,  for  he  didn't  have  a  bunch 
of  hungry  dogs  to  feed  and  next  to  nothing  to  give  them." 
George  did  not  bother  much  about  his  team;  I  suppose 
the  Eskimos  are  too  much  used  to  it  to  worry  greatly  over 


284  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

half-starved  dogs,  but  Walter  took  the  condition  of  his 
charges  very  much  to  heart. 

One  interesting  item  is  noted  in  my  diary;  we  saw 
human  footprints  and  bear  tracks  that  must  have  been 
seven  months  old.  They  were  made  in  half -melted  snow 
of  the  fall,  George  said,  not  later  than  September,  and 
perhaps  the  last  part  of  August;  the  superincumbent 
snow  of  the  winter  had  been  swept  off,  leaving  the  plain 
impress  as  it  was  made.  Walter  and  I  were  reminded  of 
the  footprints  of  Professor  Parker  and  Mr.  Brown  that 
we  found  at  about  16,000  feet  and  again  about  17,000  feet 
on  Denali,  made  a  year  before;  the  slight  compression 
of  the  snow  by  the  foot  having  served  to  retain  them, 
and  we  discussed  whether  anything  yet  remained  of  the 
miles  of  steps  we  cut  all  up  the  narrow,  broken  Karstens 
Ridge.  Then  we  fell  to  wondering  whether  the  very  slow 
movement  of  the  upper  glacier  had  yet  overwhelmed  the 
cache  of  grub  and  fuel  oil  covered  with  a  heavy  wolf 
robe  and  surrounded  by  blocks  of  snow,  that  we  left  at 
our  last  camp  at  18,000  feet,  and  Walter  said,  '*My!  I 
wish  we  could  climb  Denali 's  Wife  before  I  go  outside 
again!"  His  heart  had  always  been  set  on  that  com- 
panion peak.  But  I  said,  ''You  will  have  to  save  that  for 
a  vacation  when  you  are  in  charge  of  the  hospital  at 
Tanana" — and  we  laughed  it  off. 

It  may  be  supposed  that  our  reading  lapsed  under  the 
stress  of  this  north  coast  journey,  and  it  did.  There  was 
no  leisure  and  no  comfort  for  it.  I  managed  to  read  aloud 
for  a  little  every  night,  but  Walter  was  too  tired  after 
the  labour  of  dog-cooking  to  listen  much,  and  when  we 
had  said  our  prayers  in  our  sleeping-bags,  both  the  boys 
were  soon  asleep.  Not  needing  so  much  sleep  as  they, 
I  managed  to  cover  a  few  pages  of  Gibbon  nearly  every 
night  while  the  tiny  acetylene  lamp  held  out,  but  reading 
in  heavy  fur  mitts,  longing  all  the  time  for  the  comfort 
of  complete  immersion  within  the  deer  skins,  is  unsatis- 
factory. We  kept  our  diaries  faithfully,  however,  though 
page  after  page  of  mine  is  blurred  by  the  ink  freezing 


POINT  BAKROW  TO  FLAXMAN  ISLAND         285 

as  it  flowed.  Walter  used  a  pencil,  but  in  all  my  winter 
travelling  I  have  not  yet  been  reduced  to  leadpencil. 
All  sorts  of  abominable  ink  pellets  and  powders  I  have 
used,  but  very  rarely  indeed  a  pencil.  Sometimes  Walter 
would  ask  for  the  recitation  of  poetry  and  I  would  put 
him  to  sleep  with  Ivry  or  The  Armada  or  something  from 
Marmion  or  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,  from  Henry  V  or 
King  John  or  the  Elegy  in  a  Coimtry  Churchyard,  The 
Traveller  or  The  Deserted  Village — the  schoolboy  lines 
that  have  stayed  in  my  memory  all  my  life;  sometimes 
we  would  join  our  voices  in  hymns  or  songs  that  we  knew 
by  heart.  We  were  not  at  all  unhappy  and  never  for  a 
moment  lost  interest  in  our  journey — only  we  were  never 
really  comfortable,  save  when,  in  complete  furs  from  head 
to  foot,  we  buried  ourselves  in  our  sleeping-bags — and 
even  then  there  was  not  enough  to  put  under  us  to  make 
us  very  comfortable.  Moreover  I  am  never  very  com- 
fortable when  I  am  wearing  the  same  clothes  day  and 
night,  week  after  week,  and  cannot  wash  myself  at  all — 
of  which  weakness  I  know  very  well  our  modern  live-as- 
the-Eskimo  Arctic  explorers  will  be  sufficiently  con- 
temptuous. We  always  changed  our  footgear  when  we 
came  into  camp,  and  when  a  pair  of  socks  showed  holes 
we  threw  them  away  and  put  on  a  fresh  pair,  but  that 
was  the  extent  of  our  change.  I  knew  that  the  faces  of 
my  companions  were  sad  sights  from  grime  and  frost- 
blisters,  and  they  knew  that  mine  was;  it  was  just  as 
well  that  we  had  lost  our  little  mirror  and  could  tell  noth- 
ing about  our  own. 

I  pass  over  another  long,  wretched  day  of  cold  and 
wind,  so  similar  to  its  predecessors  that  it  presents  noth- 
ing of  note,  and  differing  from  them  only  in  that  it  added 
the  disappointment  of  not  reaching  Flaxman  Island  as 
we  had  confidently  expected,  and  come  to  the  28th  March, 
which  was  the  worst  day  of  the  whole  journey.  The  tem- 
perature when  we  left  our  snow-house  was  — 37°,  and 
the  wind  in  the  prevailing  northeast  quarter  was  stronger 
than  ever.    For  three  hours  we  struggled  against  it,  ris- 


286  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

ing  now  to  a  height  that  swept  the  loose  snow  before  it. 
Thirty-seven  below  zero  is  not  a  bad  temperature  for 
travelling  if  it  be  calm,  but  travelling  against  a  high 
wind  at  that  temperature  hour  after  hour,  is  exceedingly- 
painful  and  trying.  I  have  read  that  some  of  Captain 
Scott's  men  were  out  in  a  wind  at  70  below  zero.  I  do 
not  question  it,  but,  like  the  devils,  I  "believe  and 
tremble. '  * 

Then  George,  who  for  some  reason  had  fallen  behind 
with  his  team,  though  I  usually  insisted  he  should  be  in 
the  lead,  since  it  was  "up  to  him"  to  find  the  way,  came 
running  up  and  said  he  thought  we  were  trending  too 
far  south,  and  that,  in  such  weather,  we  were  in  danger 
of  missing  Flaxman  Island  altogether.  Walter  accord- 
ingly turned  out,  and  a  little  later  at  a  repetition  of 
George's  request,  turned  out  again.  We  had  gone  on 
thus  for  perhaps  half  an  hour  when,  through  the  driving 
snow,  Walter  and  George  saw  something  shadowy  and 
dim  to  the  left  and  called  out  simultaneously.  We  turned 
at  right  angles  at  once  and  made  for  it  and  very  shortly 
had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  a  considerable  building 
and  the  masts  of  a  small  sloop  lying  before  it.  By  this 
time  the  wind  had  increased  to  a  gale  and  it  seemed  like 
a  direct  interposition  of  Providence  that  we  reached 
Flaxman  Island  when  we  did,  and  that  we  had  not  missed 
it  altogether.  If  we  had  not  turned  out  when  we  did,  we 
should  certainly  have  passed  it  by.  George  told  us  that 
although  he  could  see  nothing,  and  had  seen  virtually 
nothing  all  day,  he  had  all  at  once  an  uneasy  feeling  that 
the  island  was  close  at  hand  and  we  in  danger  of  missing 
it.  The  wind  gradually  increased  to  a  storm,  and  the 
storm  to  a  blizzard,  and  for  sixty  hours  there  was  no  ces- 
sation. Unless  we  had  reached  Flaxman  Island  just  when 
we  did,  we  should  have  been  in  very  evil  case  indeed. 


VIII 

FLAXMAN  ISLAND  AND  THE  JOUENEY  TO 
HEBSCHEL  ISLAND 


vni 

FLAXMAN  ISLAND  AND  THE  JOURNEY  TO 
HERSCHEL  ISLAND 

Is  it  evidence  of  Franklin's  interest  in  life  beyond  the 
bounds  of  his  calling  that  he  named  this  island  for  the 
sculptor,  John  Flaxman,  the  ''pure  and  blameless  spirit" 
who  died  in  the  year  in  which  he  was  thus  honoured,  or 
was  it  not  entirely  disconnected  with  professional  pride  1 
It  may  have  been  the  monument  to  Nelson  in  St.  Paul's 
cathedral  that  prompted  it,  for  Franklin  served  in  the 
battle  of  Trafalgar,  or  it  may  have  been  the  ambitious 
design  for  a  figure  of  Britannia  200  feet  high  with  which 
Flaxman  proposed  to  crown  Greenwich  Hill  as  a  monu- 
ment to  the  naval  victories  of  England  in  the  great  war. 
I  notice  with  much  interest  that  this  design  has  been 
revived  as  a  project  to  commemorate  the  part  played  by 
the  "grand  fleet"  in  our  greater  war,  so  that,  even  as  I 
write,  there  comes  a  copy  of  the  London  Spectator  with 
a  reproduction  of  the  drawing,  more  arresting,  I  thought, 
because  no  man  ever  before  saw  picture  amidst  the  sedate 
letterpress  of  that  journal  than  because  of  any  intrinsic 
excellence. 

I  am  content  to  answer  my  own  question  by  saying  that 
Franklin's  interest  in  artistic  matters  has  other  evidence 
than  this  island ;  he  named  a  bay  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Mackenzie  for  his  friend  Mr.  Phillips,  professor  of  paint- 
ing at  the  Royal  Academy. 

Most  people  with  any  smattering  of  artistic  knowledge 
will  probably  remember  Flaxman  best  as  the  designer 
of  the  exquisite  little  cameos  that  stand  out  so  charm- 
ingly in  dead  white  upon  the  dead  blue  background  of 
Wedgwood  pottery; — the  pottery  that  brought  to  multi- 
tudes their  first  acquaintance  with  the  grace  of  Greek 

289 


290  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

art.  But  Flaxman's  name  chiefly  recalls  to  me  the  noble 
line  drawings  which  he  made  to  illustrate  Homer 's  Iliad, 
and  I  can  still  in  memory  turn  the  pages  of  that  book 
and  recapture  something  of  boyhood  delight,  as  I  can 
still  see  the  airy,  flowing  draperies  of  the  procession  of 
gods  and  heroes  that  moved  with  such  lightness  yet  such 
dignity  around  a  prized  family  teapot  and  cream  pitcher 
that  appeared  on  special  occasions. 

There  is  an  accidental  yet  deep  congruity  in  the  asso- 
ciation of  Flaxman's  name  with  this  Arctic  island.  The 
marble  of  his  statues  was  not  purer  than  its  snows ;  the 
lines  of  his  drawings  scarcely  less  severe  and  unadorned 
than  its  contour  as  it  rose  above  the  ice;  and  when  we 
left  it  and  from  a  distance  looked  back  upon  it,  its  dead 
whiteness  stood  out  against  a  sky  that  was  blue  once 
more. 

The  substantial  dwelling  which  we  found  on  the  island 
and  in  which  we  sojourned  during  the  two  and  a  half 
days  of  the  storm,  was  erected  by  Mr.  Ernest  de  Koven 
Leffingwell,  in  part  from  the  wreck  of  the  Duchess  of 
Bedford,  and  was  his  headquarters  for  several  years  dur- 
ing his  surveys  of  this  north  coast,  to  which  several 
references  have  been  made.  We  were  singularly  fortu- 
nate in  having  this  house  for  our  stay.  There  was  a  great 
sheet-iron  stove  still  in  place,  and  the  outhouses,  though 
they  had  been  much  drawn  upon  by  previous  sojourners, 
furnished  abundant  fuel.  The  house  had  been  left  almost 
as  it  stood  by  Mr.  Leffingwell  six  or  seven  years  before, 
several  pieces  of  rude  furniture  still  in  the  living-room 
and  several  hundred  books  still  on  the  shelves.  But  the 
condition  of  those  booKs  reminded  me  in  a  small  way  of 
what  the  gentle  Boers  did  to  Livingstone's  library  at 
Kolobeng  in  1852  as  a  punishment  for  daring  to  ''teach 
the  niggers,"  when  they  raided  his  mission  in  his  absence 
and  carried  off  his  school  children  into  slavery  after 
slaughtering  their  parents.  Handfuls  of  leaves  had  been 
torn  from  book  after  book,  and  used,  I  suppose  for  kind- 
ling fires.    All  the  books  on  the  shelves  in  the  vicinity  of 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  291 

the  stove  had  been  thus  treated ;  only  those  on  the  remoter 
shelves  were  unharmed.  Several  large  volumes  of  Rol- 
lin's  Ancient  History  had  been  gutted,  Plutarch  and 
Dickens  alike  had  been  most  despitefully  used,  a  number 
of  French  and  German  books  had  suffered.  It  seemed 
a  great  pity  that  there  was  no  one  on  the  coast  who  cared 
enough  for  these  books  to  rescue  them.  I  suppose  the 
natives  were  the  depredators;  a  quick  fire  is  highly  de- 
sirable under  some  circumstances,  and  books  mean  no 
more  to  Eskimos  than  to  Boers.  Coming  out  of  that 
intolerable  wind  I  can  conceive  that  I  might  almost  have 
been  brought  to  the  sacrifice  of  Rollin  myself ! 

It  was  an  immense  relief  to  be  able  to  tie  our  dogs  in 
the  lee  of  the  ruined  outhouses,  to  hang  up  all  our  accumu- 
lation of  ice- stiffened  gear  around  the  stove,  to  turn  our 
sleeping-bags  inside  out  and  spread  them  along  the 
rafters.  Soon  the  whole  neighbourhood  of  the  stove  was 
festooned  with  fur  boots,  scarves,  mitts,  artigis,  dog- 
mocassins,  felt  insoles,  and  bunches  of  stockings  and 
socks.  What  a  blessed  thing  mere  shelter  is  when  one 
has  been  buffeted  for  hours  by  a  merciless  icy  blast! 
How  we  did  revel  in  the  unaccustomed  warmth  of  a  real 
stove  and  the  commodiousness  of  a  real  house  again! 
Double  rations  for  the  dogs  were  soon  cooking,  and 
a  special  meal  for  ourselves  that  varied  our  perpetual 
stew  and  beans. 

This  house  goes  back  to  the  vaguely-ambitious  ''Anglo- 
American  Polar  Expedition"  of  1906,  when  Messrs.  Mik- 
kelsen  and  Leffingwell  brought  a  65-foot  yacht,  the 
Duchess  of  Bedford,  to  this  place,  having  had  hopes  of 
taking  her  to  Banks  Land.  But  here  she  froze  in,  and 
from  a  point  to  the  westward  a  winter  dog-sled  journey 
was  made  northward  over  the  ice,  just  reaching  the  72nd 
parallel  at  about  the  149th  meridian.  They  could  and 
would  have  gone  further  but  that  the  deep  soundings 
they  found  seemed  to  indicate  that  they  had  crossed  the 
continental  shelf  and  that  there  was  no  land  to  be  found 
beyond.    This  enterprise  finished,  the  sinking  of  the  ship 


292  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

through,  the  pulling  out  of  her  caulking  by  the  ice  in  the 
spring,  put  a  finish  to  the  expedition  as  such.  Mikkelsen 
made  a  sled  journey  back  to  civilization — to  which  I  re- 
ferred at  Cape  Lisburne — and  entered  upon  his  later, 
and,  I  think,  more  important  explorations  in  Greenland; 
while  Leffingwell  remained  at  Flaxman  Island  and  prose- 
cuted for  three  years  the  careful  triangulation  of  the 
coast  for  which  he  must  always  be  remembered  in  the 
annals  of  geography. 

Although  nearly  seventy  years  had  elapsed  since  the 
line  of  this  coast  was  completely  traced,  I  think  I  am 
right  in  saying  that  no  instrumental  survey  of  any  part 
of  it  had  ever  been  attempted.  Stockton  in  the  Thetis  in 
1889  had  made  several  astronomical  determinations  of 
positions  which  showed  that  much  of  the  coast  was  set 
down  about  four  miles  too  far  north ;  the  chart  we  used 
had  a  note  to  that  effect.  But  the  map  remained  just  as 
the  rough  field  notes  and  compass  bearings  of  the  Frank- 
lin and  Simpson  boat  expeditions  had  left  it.  When  one 
remembers  the  fog  and  foul  weather  that  was  encoun- 
tered it  is  no  matter  for  wonder  that  the  resulting  map 
was  very  inaccurate.  I  am  told  that  when  Mr.  Leffing- 
well's  work  was  done  and  he  was  gone  home  with  his 
mass  of  figures  to  work  up,  there  arose  some  question 
about  the  measurement  of  the  base  line  upon  which  the 
whole  system  of  triangulation  depended;  whereupon  he 
made  another  voyage  to  Flaxman  Island  to  remeasure 
that  line  and  remove  any  possibility  of  error. 

There  is  something  very  admirable  in  the  devotion  of 
years  of  one's  life  to  unselfish,  public-spirited  labours 
such  as  this.  We  have  been  more  accustomed  to  asso- 
ciate work  of  this  sort,  all  over  the  world,  with  leisured 
Englishmen  than  perhaps  with  men  of  any  other  na- 
tionality; it  should  be  matter  for  congratulation  that 
young  Americans  of  the  same  class  are  turning  to  such 
useful  and  laudable  diversion.  By  the  kindness  of  the 
United  States  Geological  Survey  I  have  just  received  a 
proof  of  Mr.  Leffingwell 's  maps,  the  publication  of  which 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  293 

has  been  delayed  by  the  war,  with  the  assurance  that  the 
whole  report  will  shortly  be  issued.  I  have  no  acquaint- 
ance with  Mr.  Leffing^^ell,  save  the  slight  yet  not  negli- 
gible acquaintance  that  rummaging  amongst  the  remains 
of  the  books  that  he  deemed  worthy  of  transportation 
to  the  Arctic  regions  can  give,  but  I  venture  to  call  the 
attention  of  the  geographical  societies  of  the  world  to 
the  work  he  has  done  on  the  north  coast  of  Alaska,  as 
perhaps  not  unworthy  the  recognition  of  their  major 
awards. 

I  lit  upon  a  volume  of  Sir  James  Stephens'  Lectures 
on  French  History,  and  tore  out  the  heart  of  its  compari- 
son between  the  constitutional  development  of  England 
and  France ;  I  found  a  curious  book  on  Left-Handedness 
by  the  Scotch-Canadian  archasologist  and  educator,  Daniel 
Wilson,  and  I  picked  up  and  brought  away  as  a  souvenir 
a  little  reprint  of  a  translation  of  Schiller's  Revolt  of  the 
Netherlands,  while  Walter  carried  off  as  his  prize  a 
primer  of  French  literature. 

The  day  after  our  arrival  was  Good  Friday,  and  amidst 
the  unabated  howling  of  the  storm  outside  I  read  to  the 
boys  the  narrative  of  the  tremendous  events  of  that  day 
and  we  joined  in  its  moving  devotions.  I  recalled  the 
crowded,  fasting,  three-hour  congregations  of  many  Good 
Fridays,  and  I  doubted  if  there  were  amongst  them  any 
deeper  feeling  than  that  which  we  shared  in  this  desolate 
spot;  great  churches  and  funereal  draperies  and  solemn 
music  are  not  essential  to  the  emotions  of  that  anniver- 
sary. 

Towards  evening  there  came  a  lull  in  the  force  of  the 
wind,  and  George,  who  was  busied  with  the  dogs,  came 
in  and  said  that  a  sled  was  approaching.  We  knew  who  it 
must  be ;  the  sloop  lying  in  the  ice  had  at  once  been  recog- 
nized by  George. 

It  may  be  recalled  that  I  spoke  of  a  trader  who  had 
given  trouble  to  the  schoolmaster  at  Wainwright  and  had 
removed  to  Point  Barrow.  He  gave  greater  trouble 
there.    Late  in  the  fall,  when  the  precarious  navigation  of 


294  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

these  waters  was  definitely  closing,  he  had  abducted  a 
girl,  a  daughter  of  Mr.  Brower's  wife  by  her  former 
Eskimo  husband,  a  few  months  married  to  an  Eskimo 
boy.  To  what,  if  any,  degree  the  girl  was  consenting,  I 
could  not  discover — it  seemed  a  case  of  "Once  on  board 
the  lugger  and  the  girl  is  mine!" — but  I  learned  with 
indignation  that  a  warrant  for  the  man's  arrest,  issued 
by  the  United  States  commissioner  and  entrusted  to  a 
specially  deputized  native  constable  to  serve,  while  the 
sloop  still  lay  at  the  edge  of  the  ice  waiting  for  a  fair 
wind,  had  been  insolently  defied,  and  the  man  had  sailed 
off  intending  much  further  voyage  to  the  eastward  with 
his  trading  goods,  but  brought  up  here  by  the  closing  in 
of  the  ice.  Now  I  have  no  personal  courage  to  boast 
about,  and  the  habit  of  my  calling  of  many  years  makes 
me  shrink  from  the  thought  of  anything  like  personal 
violence,  but  had  I  been  that  United  States  commissioner 
I  think  that  a  high  resentment  at  the  contemptuous  dis- 
regard of  my  lawful  authority  would  have  overborne  all 
other  considerations  and  nerved  me  to  summon  such 
armed  posse  as  the  place  afforded,  native  or  white,  and 
to  go  in  person  and  take  that  man.  It  is  but  one  more 
illustration  of  the  futility  of  our  system  of  primary  jus- 
tice, which  forces  the  unpaid  magistrate's  office  upon, 
those  who,  by  character  or  calling,  are  not  fitted  to  it,  and 
provides  no  proper  means  for  the  exercise  of  its  author- 
ity ;  one  more  illustration  of  the  need  of  an  Alaskan  con- 
stabulary modelled  somewhat  upon  the  Canadian  North- 
west Mounted  Police,  to  which  need  the  present  governor 
of  Alaska  draws  attention  in  his  1918  report,  just  to  my 
hand;  another  raven  sent  out  of  the  ark,  I  fear. 

So  here  were  the  man — and  the  girl,  as  a  fresh  word 
from  George  brought — on  their  way  to  visit  us.  The 
affair  was  none  of  ours;  we  were  merely  travellers 
through  the  Arctic  solitude  glad  to  see  any  other  human 
beings,  eager  to  learn  anything  we  could  about  the  re- 
mainder of  our  route,  and  to  replenish  our  supplies  from 
a  trader's  stock,  if  possible. 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  295 

What  we  learned  was  very  encouraging.  With  good 
weather  we  should  be  able  to  reach  Barter  Island  in  two 
long  runs,  and  at  Barter  Island  was  the  base  camp  of  Mr. 
Stefansson's  exploring  expedition,  with  a  number  of  peo- 
ple, white  and  native.  Mr.  Stefansson,  he  told  us,  had 
been  sick  most  part  of  the  winter  at  Herschel  Island, 
and  still  lay  there,  but  a  party  under  Storker  Storkerson, 
his  lieutenant,  had  a  week  or  two  before  set  out  north- 
ward over  the  ice  from  Cross  Island,  which  lies  seven  or 
eight  miles  off  Franklin's  Anxiety  Point,  and  thus  had 
been  passed  by  us  unknowing.  Cross  Island  was  named 
by  Stockton  of  the  Thetis  for  a  grave  marked  by  a  cross. 
Storkerson 's  enterprise  was  organized  under  Peary's 
system  of  supporting  parties  returning  when  a  certain 
distance  was  covered,  and  had  nine  sleds  and  sixty-eight 
dogs,  and  altogether  thirteen  men,  of  whom  five  were 
the  advance  detachment  and  the  remainder  the  supports. 
Its  purpose  was,  of  course,  to  reach  northern  land,  if  any 
such  were  reachable,  or  at  any  rate  to  push  still  further 
back  the  region  of  the  unknown.  As  to  plans  beyond  this 
there  seemed  nothing  definite ;  some  said  he  would  work 
to  the  eastward  to  Banks  Land,  where  a  schooner  was  to 
search  for  him;  some  that  he  would  seek  to  drift  west- 
ward on  the  ice  with  the  intent  of  reaching  the  Siberian 
coast. 

Storkerson  had  joined  the  Duchess  of  Bedford  when 
she  cleared  from  Victoria  in  1906  as  a  sailor,  but  had  been 
quickly  promoted  to  mate  when  the  position  fell  vacant. 
He  accompanied  Messrs.  Mikkelsen  and  LeflQngwell  on 
their  ice  journey  of  1907,  had  remained  on  the  Arctic 
coast  and  married  there,  and  had  been  associated  with 
Mr.  Stefansson  in  his  later  explorations,  who  taught  him 
the  use  of  instruments.  At  this  writing  the  party  is  long 
since  returned  safely,  having  reached  a  latitude  of  73° 
58',  and  thus  made  the  farthest  northing  ever  made  on 
the  Pacific  side  of  the  American  continent,  some  35'  be- 
yond CoUinson's  record  of  1850.  Without  any  disparage- 
ment to  Mr.  Storkerson,  who  was  himself  sick  during 


296  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

much  of  this  journey,  we  may  feel  that  if  the  driving 
force  and  confidence  of  Mr.  Stefansson's  personality  had 
not  been  so  unfortunately  withdrawn,  much  more  might 
reasonably  have  been  expected  of  this  large  and  well- 
provided  party.  They  went  neither  east  nor  west  but 
returned  the  next  November  to  the  point  at  which  they 
left. 

Our  roving  trader,  who  ''fears  not  the  monarch  and 
heeds  not  the  law,"  was  willing  to  sell  us  some  coal  oil, 
sugar  and  dried  potatoes,  and  that  was  a  welcome  recruit- 
ing of  our  stores,  especially  the  coal  oil,  but  he  had  noth- 
ing in  the  way  of  dog-feed  to  dispose  of — indeed  was 
about  to  start  over  the  ice  to  look  for  open  water  and 
seals  that  he  might  feed  his  own  dogs.  It  is  sometimes 
twenty  miles  to  open  water  from  Flaxman's  Island,  and 
I  know  not  how  he  fared.  Once,  when  he  had  gone  out- 
side to  a  cache  of  supplies  made  when  the  boat  froze-in, 
the  girl,  who  was  squatted  on  the  floor  with  a  wistful 
look  in  her  eyes,  began  timidly  to  speak  to  me,  but  had  no 
more  than  asked  me  whether  I  had  heard  about  her  from 
her  step-father,  when  the  man  returned  and  she  was 
immediately  silent.  I  felt  myself  under  obligation  to 
ask  her,  in  his  presence,  since  I  had  no  opportunity  to 
speak  in  his  absence,  if  she  were  with  him  voluntarily, 
and  she  said  that  she  was — with  no  great  alacrity,  how- 
ever; and  he  presently  withdrew  with  her  and  we  saw 
them  no  more. 

They  were  living,  we  learned,  in  a  hut  on  the  mainland, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Canning  river  of  Franklin,  having 
moved  away  from  this  house  because  driftwood  was 
plentiful  on  the  other  side  of  the  channel  and  very  scarce 
here.  We  felt  grateful  that  they  had  not  remained  until 
all  the  outhouse-material  had  been  burned  up.  There 
was  nothing  whatever  that  we  could  do  in  this  matter, 
but  I  felt  sorry  for  the  girl,  a  rather  pretty,  weU-formed 
girl,  with  good  English,  whether  the  willing  or  unwilling 
victim  of  the  man.  I  told  the  police  inspector  at  Herschel 
Island  of  the  case,  and  I  understand  he  was  refused  per- 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  297 

mission  to  pass  into  British  waters  and  trade  in  British 
territory.  He  will  have  to  return  to  Point  Barrow  when 
the  revenue  cutter  is  not  in  its  vicinity  or  he  will  be  dealt 
with  summarily;  and  I  am  anxious  to  see  the  time  come 
when  immunity  from  penalties  for  the  violation  of  the 
criminal  law,  so  long  boasted  by  those  who  use  these  nar- 
row waters  of  the  north,  will  be  as  obsolete  as  piracy  on 
the  high  seas. 

Canning,  of  the  Canning  river,  was  of  course  George 
Canning,  the  dominant  force  in  British  and  even,  per- 
haps, in  European  politics  at  that  time;  he  who  "called 
the  new  world  into  existence  to  redress  the  balance  of  the 
old,"  as  he  said  when  he  recognized  the  South  American 
revolutionary  governments,  and  is  supposed  to  have  sug- 
gested to  James  Monroe  his  famous  ''Doctrine." 

We  woke  on  Saturday  morning  to  wind  that  had  not 
diminished,  and  although  Walter  grew  impatient  and 
wanted  to  be  moving,  George  said  "  No ! "  So  I  did  not 
take  Walter's  wishes  into  consideration.  When  one  em- 
ploys a  guide  there  is  no  other  sensible  course  than  to 
depend  upon  his  guidance  unless  he  prove  himself  in- 
capable, and  I  had  all  along  put  upon  George  the  respon- 
sibility of  such  decisions.  So  we  settled  down  to  another 
day  of  rest  and  refreshment  and  I  browsed  amongst  the 
books.  In  the  afternoon  Walter  and  I  resumed  our 
Shakespeare  and  spent  a  couple  of  hours  with  the  Mid- 
summer  Night's  Bream. 

If  it  were  noticed  some  pages  back  that  I  passed  over 
several  of  Franklin's  names  without  comment,  it  may  be 
as  well  to  say  that  it  was  because  I  can  find  nothing  to 
tell  about  them.  Gwydyr  Bay,  Prudlioe  Bay,  Yar- 
borough  Inlet,  Franklin  merely  mentions  as  the  names  of 
indentations  of  the  coast  without  any  word  as  to  those 
whom  he  designed  to  honour.  The  only  one  that  I  can 
make  any  conjecture  about  is  the  last,  and  since  it  dis- 
appears altogether  from  Mr.  Leffingwell's  map,  it  is  not 
worth  speculating  as  to  whether  it  were  named  for 
Charles  Anderson-Pelham,  earl  of  Yarborough,  or  not, 


298  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

though  I  think  it  likely,  since  he  was  commodore  of  the 
Royal  Yacht  Squadron  at  that  time. 

Doubtless  Mr.  Leffingwell  was  justified  in  obliterating 
Yarborough  Inlet;  it  is  in  the  close  vicinity  of  Foggy 
Island  and  Franklin  could  do  no  more  than  guess  at  the 
real  features  of  this  region;  but  he  erred  in  retaining 
the  misspelled  Heald  Point,  since  Franklin  plainly  prints 
it  ''Herald" — a  similar  case  to  Peard  and  Pearl.  And 
what  shall  we  say  to  the  multitudes  of  new  names  with 
which  he  has  covered  his  chart"? — remembering  W.  H. 
Ball's  rather  petulant  complaint  in  his  Alaska  and  Its 
Resources  of  the  names  with  which  the  British  explorers 
have  so  ''plentifully  bespattered"  the  north  coast? 
Every  whaling  captain  that  ever  visited  these  waters, 
every  trader,  every  squaw-man  on  this  coast,  has  his 
island  or  his  point.  One  can  fancy  the  Marquess  Camden 
and  Sir  Francis  Beaufort  uneasy  at  some  of  their  com- 
pany, the  earl  of  Yarborough  quite  willing  to  make  his 
bow  and  withdraw,  but  maps  make  as  strange  bedfellows 
as  poverty  itself.  There  are  indeed  so  many  little 
islands  and  sandbanks  amongst  the  shallows  of  this 
coast  that  when  Mr.  Leffingwell 's  local  names  were 
exhausted  he  had  to  resort  to  numbers  to  designate  the 
rest. 

Sometimes  I  wonder  if  there  can  be  many  who  share 
my  desire  to  know  the  origin  of  place-names.  I  think 
not:  I  think  if  the  desire  were  common  there  would 
arise  some  more  extensive  attempt  to  satisfy  it  than  ex- 
ists today.  The  gazetteers  and  encyclopaedias  care  little 
or  nothing  about  it;  they  give  latitude  and  longitude, 
population  and  resources,  but  are  not  interested  in  the 
meaning  or  origin  of  names.  Yet  to  me  they  are  full  of 
interest,  and  often  carry  locked  up  in  themselves  the 
beginning  of  the  history  of  a  place.  Long  ago  when 
passing  through  the  panhandle  of  Texas,  my  curiosity 
was  aroused  as  to  the  origin  of  the  name  of  the  Canadian 
river.  What  was  a  Canadian  river  doing  flowing  through 
New  Mexico,  Texas  and  Oklahoma?    I  tried  to  find  out. 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  299 

I  could  of  course  guess  that  it  arose  from  an  early 
settlement  of  Canadians  upon  its  banks,  or  from  early 
visits  of  traders  from  the  north;  but,  if  so,  there  should 
be  some  record,  some  tradition,  that  could  be  cited.  Hav- 
ing exhausted  local  sources  of  information  I  applied  to 
the  national  authorities;  I  wrote  to  the  Bureau  of  Geo- 
graphical Names,  and  I  was  informed  that  the  name 
probably  arose  from  the  corruption  of  *'canonita"  or 
little  canyon,  the  river's  course  being  marked  by  such 
features.  But,  as  I  pointed  out,  if  that  were  only  a  guess, 
why  was  not  a  guess  about  early  Canadian  settlers  just 
as  good?  and  I  asked  for  some  evidence  that  the  name 
was  a  corruption  of  a  Spanish  word ;  some  citation  of  an 
old  map  on  which  it  bore  that  name.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
on  the  old  maps  that  I  have  seen  the  name  is  Colorado  or 
Red — one  of  the  many  Colorados  in  the  southwest.  My 
second  letter  received  no  answer:  government  bureaus 
are  still  not  anxious  to  encourage  people  who  ''want  to 
know  you  know ' ' ;  and  I  have  never  to  this  day  had  any 
light  on  the  origin  of  that  river's  name. 

There  are  few  more  exasperating  things  than  to  want 
to  know  something  that  it  is  entirely  legitimate  and  even, 
as  I  look  at  it,  laudable  to  want  to  know — and  to  have  no 
earthly  means  of  finding  it  out;  and  it  is  one  of  my 
strongest  "intimations  of  immortality"  that  there  must 
be  another  life  in  which  all  the  things  we  were  so  anxious 
and  so  unable  to  know  will  be  learnable — as  the  old  Scotch 
lady  felt  about  the  Gowrie  conspiracy. 

There  is  Manning  Potut  sticking  out  from  this  north 
coast,  further  to  the  eastward.  For  some  map-maker's 
reason  it  is  selected  to  appear  on  maps  of  the  whole  con- 
tinent, and  I  have  even  seen  it  on  maps  of  the  world.  Yet 
I  can  discover  nothing  about  it ;  Franklin  simply  names 
it  and  passes  on.  And  this  north  coast  has  many  such 
names.  I  wonder  if  there  be  anyone  in  the  world  who 
knows  why  Franklin  named  Manning  Point,  or,  besides 
myself,  cares? 

Meanwhile  I  am  grateful  to  the  Alaskan  Division  of 


300  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

the  United  States  Geological  Survey  and  particularly  to 
Marcus  Baker,  for  the  admirable  Geographic  Dictionary 
of  Alaska,  which  has  done  so  much  to  discover  and  pre- 
serve the  origin  and  meaning  of  our  place-names.  The 
Geological  Survey  is  the  one  government  agency  in 
Alaska  that  is  beyond  all  adverse  criticism;  a  model  of 
disinterested  and  scholarly  scientijfic  work. 

At  4.30  on  the  morning  of  the  last  day  of  March  I 
roused  George  and  bade  him  go  out  and  report  on  the 
weather.  When  he  returned  and  declared  it  "aU  the 
same"  I  settled  myself  to  spend  a  quiet  Easter  at  Flax- 
man  Island.  We  rose  two  or  three  hours  later  and  had 
finished  a  leisurely  breakfast  when  there  seemed  indica- 
tion of  a  lull  in  the  wind.  Presently  an  occasional  gleam 
of  sun  appeared,  and,  as  it  was  soon  evident  that  the 
storm  was  over,  when  we  had  said  the  service  of  the  day 
I  gave  the  word  to  make  preparation  for  our  departure, 
for  there  was  no  question  that  on  the  score  of  dog-feed 
alone  we  must  move  as  soon  as  moving  was  safe.  By  9 
o^clock  we  were  all  packed  up  and  ready,  save  for  hitch- 
ing the  dogs,  but  when  George  and  I  had  hitched  our  team 
they  had  to  stand  a  solid  hour  while  all  hands  worked 
at  the  recovery  of  Walter's  harness.  George  and  I  had 
brought  our  harness  indoors;  Walter  had  thoughtlessly 
left  his  lying  where  it  was  taken  off.  Some  obstruction 
or  other  caused  an  eddy  in  the  wind,  and  a  notion  may 
be  formed  of  the  violence  of  the  storm  when  I  say  that 
the  harness  was  buried  three  or  four  feet  deep  in  snow 
that  was  almost  as  hard  as  plaster  of  Paris.  We  had 
to  cut  out  great  blocks  of  snow  with  the  saw  and  the 
axes,  to  lay  bare  all  the  neighbourhood  of  the  front  of 
the  sled,  and  it  had  to  be  done  very  carefully  lest  the  har- 
ness itself  be  chopped  up  in  the  process.  Once  more  we 
realized  how  exceedingly  fortunate  we  had  been  in  reach- 
ing Flaxman  Island  when  the  storm  began. 

So  late  a  start  made  us  very  doubtful  of  reaching  Col- 
linson  Point,  but  the  storm  had  done  us  one  great  service : 
it  had  swept  all  loose  snow  entirely  away,  had  gathered 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  301 

it  into  drifts  and  there  hardened  it  to  marble,  and  for  the 
first  time  since  we  left  Point  Barrow  we  had  an  entirely 
solid  surface  to  travel  upon.  Here  and  there,  also,  ap- 
peared traces  of  the  tracks  of  the  sleds  carrying  supplies 
from  the  base  camp  of  the  exploring  expedition  to  its 
outpost  at  Cross  Island,  but  it  was  not  possible  to  follow 
them,  so  much  of  them  was  overspread  with  hardened 
snow.  We  knew  that  we  were  crossing  Camden  Bay 
and  that  CoUinson  Point  is  near  the  bottom  of  it, 
but  the  bay  is  a  good  deal  deeper  than  our  chart 
showed  it. 

Franklin  named  Camden  Bay  for  the  marquess  of  that 
name,  the  son  of  that  Chief  Justice  Pratt  who  rendered 
the  famous  decision  against  the  legality  of  ' '  general  war- 
rants" in  the  contest  of  the  Crown  with  John  Wilkes. 
Eaised  to  the  peerage  as  Earl  Camden  when  he  became 
lord  chancellor,  it  was  his  familiarity  with  this  ''little 
lawyer"  that  Garrick  boasted  about  to  Boswell.  ''Well, 
sir,  he  was  a  little  lawyer  to  be  so  intimate  with  a  player," 
said  Dr.  Johnson.  His  son,  honoured  here  by  Franklin, 
was  successively  a  lord  of  the  admiralty,  a  lord  of  the 
treasury  and  lord  lieutenant  of  Ireland  in  the  ministry  of 
William  Pitt,  and  afterwards  lord  president  of  the  coun- 
cil, chancellor  of  the  University  of  Cambridge  and  a 
knight  of  the  garter.  And  now,  Ned  Arey,  with  your 
Eskimo  wife  and  bunch  of  half-breed  children,  what  have 
you  to  say  for  yourself  that  on  Mr.  Leffingwell's  map 
your  island  intrudes  into  my  lord's  bay?  I  may  best 
answer  for  him  as  I  found  him,  "The  rank  is  but  the 
guinea  stamp^  The  man's  the  gowd  for  a'  that." 

Collinson  spent  his  third  Arctic  winter  (1853-54)  in  the 
Enterprise  in  this  bay,  after  his  wonderful  voyage  along 
the  winding  channels  of  the  mainland  coast  of  America 
up  to  the  very  waters  in  which  Franklin's  ships  were 
sunk — though  he  found  no  trace  of  the  expedition — just 
too  late  in  getting  back  here  to  Camden  Bay  to  make  his 
way  to  Point  Barrow  and  home.  The  gate  was  closed 
again.    He  had  to  wait  a  year  to  get  in ;  he  had  to  wait 


302  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

a  year  to  get  out ;  such  are  the  fortunes  of  this  northern 
passage.  Perhaps  with  modern  motive  power  it  might 
be  possible  with  extreme  good  luck  as  to  the  season,  and 
skill  in  making  the  most  of  good  luck,  to  accomplish  the 
voyage  from  ocean  to  ocean  in  one  season,  along  the 
known  and  charted  waterways;  but  even  today,  with 
every  advantage,  the  chances  would  be  very  much  against 
it.  The  Northwest  Passage  teems  with  historical  and 
geographical  interest ;  there  is  little  likelihood  that  it  will 
ever  have  any  other. 

We  did  not  reach  Collinson  Point  that  night — nor  any 
other  point,  although  we  travelled  till  8  o'clock  and  had 
to  make  another  camp  without  wood  for  cooking  dog- 
feed.  It  was  midnight  when  the  boys  had  finished  cook- 
ing over  the  primus  stoves,  and  when  the  food  was  cooled 
and  served  out,  for  a  moment  there  was  no  sound  but 
the  happy  gobbling  of  many  mouths.  Then  Kerawak, 
who  was  tethered  nearby,  lifted  up  his  voice  in  a  mixture 
of  yelp  and  howl  that  said  plainly  enough,  ' '  Great  Scott ! 
is  that  all?  Is  that  all  we  get  for  supper"?" — for  the 
ration  was  very  scant.  It  was  a  poor  Easter  for  man 
and  beast. 

I  am  sorry  that  the  Romanzoff  mountains  of  Franklin, 
which  we  were  now  abreast  of,  tend  to  disappear  from 
American  maps  and  would  make  a  plea  that  the  name 
be  retained.  They  are  sufficiently  separated  from  the 
Franklin  mountains  to  the  westward  by  the  valley  of  the 
Hula-Hula  river  to  justify  a  separate  name  and  they 
commemorate  a  ''distinguished  patron  and  promoter  of 
discovery  and  science,"  Count  Nicholas  Romanzoff, 
chancellor  of  the  Russian  empire,  who  bore  the  cost  of 
Kotzebue's  famous  voyage  and  of  the  expeditions  that 
surveyed  and  mapped  the  New  Siberian  Islands.  I  think 
he  is  entitled  to  his  mountains,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  that 
Mr.  Leffingwell  restores  them  to  him. 

By  noon  today  we  reached  the  first  occupied  habita- 
tion that  we  had  seen  since  we  left  Cape  Halkett,  where 
two  white  men,  an  elderly  one  named  Sam  Mclntyre  and 


/ 


NORTH  COAM      (.uuKlNG   DOG  FEED. 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  303 

a  pleasant  quiet  youth  named  Paul  Steen,  were  winter- 
ing. We  were  glad  to  spend  an  hour  with  them,  to  de- 
liver the  mail  we  had  brought  for  them,  impart  our 
news,  and  to  accept  insistent  hospitality  that  would  not 
even  allow  us  to  withdraw  a  cork  from  a  thermos  bottle. 
Mclntyre's  account  of  himseK  interested  me  very  much. 
He  told  me  he  was  the  son  of  the  chaplain  of  the  77th 
Cameronian  Highlanders  in  the  Crimean  War,  who  was 
severely  wounded  by  a  shell  at  the  battle  of  Inkerman 
when  he  and  a  Roman  Catholic  chaplain  together  were 
carrying  a  wounded  man  off  the  field;  the  Roman  chap- 
lain being  killed  on  the  spot.  He  knew  the  names  of  the 
Crimean  commanders  and  spoke  of  Col.  Baker,  later 
Baker  pasha,  as  a  constant  visitor  at  his  home  quarters 
and  playmate  of  the  children.  I  recalled  the  scandal 
in  connection  with  this  officer,  which  brought  about  his 
dismissal  from  the  British  army  and  his  transfer  to  the 
Turkish.  Mclntyre  expressed  himself  as  greatly  in  want 
of  a  Bible,  and  because  that  is  a  want  that  does  not  seem 
to  be  keenly  felt  amongst  the  white  men  of  the  Arctic 
coast,  and  we  had  a  little  New  Testament  and  the  Prayer 
Book  with  its  copious  extracts  from  the  Scriptures,  I 
gave  him  my  Bible. 

He  told  me  a  story  of  Bishop  Rowe  that  is  so  character- 
istic that  it  is  worth  setting  down,  "^e  said  that  he  and 
some  companions  were  stormbound  and  short  of  grub 
somewhere  in  the  Seward  peninsula  when  the  Bishop  and 
his  dog-team  ''blew  in"  and  decided  also  to  await  better 
weather;  that  the  Bishop  opened  up  his  grub  box  and 
bade  the  boys  help  themselves,  but  tb  t  they  told  him  he 
had  better  keep  his  own  grub  since  they  were  all  short. 
The  Bishop  however  insisted  upon  sharing  and  sharing 
alike,  saying,  ''As  long  as  it  lasts  we'll  eat  it,  and  when 
it's  done  we'll  all  go  on  the  bum  together."  Again  and 
again  Mclntyre  repeated  this  saying  with  great  relish. 
I  knew  that  Bishop  Rowe  had  never  travelled  in  the 
Seward  peninsula  in  winter,  and  that  it  must  be  an  echo 
of  some  occurrence  elsewhere,  but  it  is  just  what  the 


304  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Bishop  would  have  done,  whether  or  not  just  what  he 
would  have  said.  I  was  a  little  disconcerted  when  my 
reference  to  Mclntyre's  interesting  extraction  provoked 
smiles  from  the  white  men  who  knew  him,  and  to  learn 
that  he  had  a  reputation  for  romance. 

Ten  miles  more  brought  us  to  Barter  Island  and  to  the 
extensive  building,  half  underground  in  sensible  ver- 
nacular fashion,  of  Mr.  Stefansson's  base  camp,  and  here 
we  were  hospitably  received  by  Capt.  Hadley,*  who  was 
in  charge,  with  two  other  white  men  and  several  Eskimo 
women  and  children  and  a  great  deal  of  stuff.  The 
schooner  Polar  Bear,  belonging  to  the  expedition,  lay 
in  the  ice.  Hadley  I  found  a  most  interesting  man  and 
we  sat  up  till  midnight,  talking,  although  I  had  had  little 
sleep  the  previous  night — and  then  I  went  reluctantly  to 
bed.  He  had  been  on  the  Karluk  when  she  was  lost,  full 
of  scientists  and  all  sorts  of  expensive  and  elaborate 
equipment,  and  bore  no  small  part  in  bringing  the  sur- 
vivors to  Wrangell  Island,  there  lying  many  months  until 
rescued  by  the  Kmg  and  Wing.  Having  just  read  the 
Last  Voyage  of  the  Karluk  it  was  illuminating  in  many 
ways  to  hear  Capt.  Hadley 's  account. 

But  what  interested  me  most  keenly  was  his  statement 
that  while  on  Wrangell  Island,  again  and  again,  on  clear 
days,  he  had  seen  land  with  mountain  tops  far  to  the 
northeast.  Now  those  read  in  Arctic  voyages  will  recall 
that  Kellet  in  the  Herald  in  1890,  after  discovering  the 
island  that  bears  his  ship's  name  and  landing  upon  it, 
reported  further  extensive  lofty  land  in  about  72°  north 
175°  west,  and  that  five  years  later  Rodgers  in  the  U.  S.  S. 
Vincenmes  anchored  on  that  spot  and  reported  no  land  in 
sight  for  thirty  miles  in  any  direction.  Moreover  the 
Jeamnette,  in  her  long,  slow  drift  in  the  ice,  saw  **not  one 
speck  of  land  north  of  Herald  Island"  until  she  was  30° 
further  to  the  west,  and  again  Berry  in  the  Rodgers, 
searching  for  the  Jeannette's  people  in  1881,  reached 

*  I  learn  with  great  regret  that  Capt.  Hadley  died  of  the  influenza  in 
San  Francisco  the  following  year. 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  305 

73°  44'  in  about  170°  west  with  soundings  of  380  fathoms, 
and  saw  no  land. 

I  plied  Hadley  with  questions :  There  could  be  no  pos- 
sibility that  it  was  cloud  banks  he  saw,  or  mirage  1  How 
could  it  be  when  it  lay  always  in  the  same  place  and  bore 
always  the  same  shape?  Could  he  make  any  estimate  of 
the  distance?  It  was  very  far  off,  perhaps  an  hundred 
miles,  perhaps  more ;  it  was  impossible  to  say,  but  it  had 
bold  rugged  mountain  peaks  covered  with  snow  in  places 
and  in  places  bare.  I  reminded  him  of  the  Jeannette 
drift,  of  the  Vincennes  voyage,  of  Berry  in  the  Rodgers. 
Yes,  he  knew  of  the  two  former  though  he  seemed  to  think 
there  was  some  doubt  about  the  last,  but  it  did  not  matter 
how  many  said  there  was  no  land  there,  he  had  seen  it 
again  and  again,  and  had  no  more  doubt  about  it  than 
about  the  island  we  were  on  now.  How  many  times  alto- 
gether could  he  say  that  he  had  distinctly  seen  it?  Well, 
he  had  made  no  count;  every  thoroughly  clear  day;  and 
he  said  that  though  clear  days  were  rare,  when  they  were 
clear  they  were  wonderfully  clear.  Had  he  seen  the 
land  twenty  times  ?    Yes,  fully  twenty  and  probably  more. 

So  there  it  stands :  Eodgers  did  not  see  Wrangell  Land* 
for  fog,  though  but  a  few  miles  off  his  course ;  there  may 
have  been  other  land  he  did  not  see;  the  Jeannette  drifted 
steadily  northwest  away  from  Herald  Island  and  in  this 
land  is  reported  northeast.  And  Hadley 's  testimony 
agrees  remarkably  with  Kellett's  description:  *' There 
was  a  fine  clear  atmosphere  (such  a  one  as  can  only  be 
seen  in  this  climate),  except  in  the  direction  of  this  ex- 
tended land,  where  the  clouds  rose  in  numerous  extended 
masses,  occasionally  leaving  the  very  lofty  peaks  un- 
capped, where  could  be  distinctly  seen  columns,  pillars 
and  very  broken  peaks,  characteristic  of  the  higher  head- 
lands in  this  sea.  East  Cape  and  Cape  Lisburne,  for 
example.    As  far  as  a  man  can  be  certain  who  has  130 


*  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  any  account  of  Rodgers'  voyage  and  think 
that  none  was  published.  I  quote  from  Greely's  Hwndbook  of  Polar 
Discoveries. 


306  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

pair  of  eyes  to  assist  him,  and  all  agreeing,  I  am  certain 
we  have  discovered  an  extensive  land. ' '  * 

It  was  the  belief  of  Dr.  Petermann,  ''the  great  Ger- 
man geographer,"  in  this  land  and  its  extension  to  the 
north,  that  lured  De  Long  into  deciding  upon  the  Bering 
Straits  route.  Dr.  Petermann  is  the  classic  example  of 
the  "armchair  geographer."  He  was  certain  that  the 
pole  could  never  be  reached  by  the  Baffin's  Bay  and 
Smith's  Sound  route;  certain  that  it  could  never  be 
reached  by  sledges ;  believed  that  it  could  be  reached  by 
the  Bering  Sea  route  in  one  summer  with  a  suitable  ves- 
sel and  a  commander  experienced  in  ice  navigation.  It 
was  his  armchair  theories  that  were  responsible  for  the 
tragedy  of  the  Jeannette.    The  species  is  not  yet  extinct. 

There  it  stands  and  there  we  must  leave  it;  and  the 
question  will  probably  never  be  solved  save  by  some  such 
undertaking  on  the  ice  with  dogs  and  sleds  as  Stefansson 
had  planned  and  Storkerson  was  at  this  time  attempting 
to  execute.  To  gain  a  northing  of  75°  or  76°  and  then 
drift  westward  upon  one  of  the  enormous  old  ice-floes 
of  these  waters,  or  continue  the  sled  journey  in  that  direc- 
tion should  the  drift  be  otherwise,  depending  upon  seals 
and  bears  for  subsistence,  offers,  it  would  seem,  the  only 
likelihood  of  exploring  this  region,  and  Mr.  Stefansson 
has  demonstrated  the  practicability  of  the  procedure. 
It  may  be,  however,  that  the  aeroplane  will  fulfil  the 
confident  expectations  that  are  entertained  of  it  and  ren- 
der dogs  and  sleds  obsolete  for  polar  explorations;  I 
have  my  doubts. 

Storkenson's  journey  has  had  one  result:  it  has  erased 
from  the  map  the  ''Keenan  Land"  reported  by  a  whaling 
captain  of  that  name  on  the  ship  Stamhoul  of  New  Bed- 
ford in  the  eighties.  A  more  extended  journey  of  the 
same  kind  might  put  Kellett's  ''Plover  Land"  back  on 
the  map,  or  finally  erase  it  also. 

*  I  quote  from  Osborn's  McClure's  Discovery  of  the  Northwest  Passage, 
where  part  of  Kellett's  dispatch  to  the  British  admiralty  is  transcribed, 
p.  49. 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  307 

The  two  other  white  men  were  also  interesting.  Be- 
fore they  joined  the  expedition  they  had  been  on  Victoria 
Island  trapping  for  a  certain  degenerate  Russian  Jew, 
now  languishing  in  the  gaol  at  Herschel  Island  for  de- 
frauding the  Canadian  customs,  and  the  stories  they  told 
me  of  this  man's  treatment  of  the  natives,  of  his  abuse 
of  little  girls,  of  his  outrages  upon  common  decency, 
besides  his  rapacity  and  greed,  aroused  my  highest  in- 
dignation. The  white  fox  threatens  to  be  as  fatal  to  those 
remote  isolated  folks  as  the  sea-otter  was  to  the  Aleutian 
Islanders.  What  a  responsibility  rests  directly  upon  the 
woman  who  started  the  silly  fashion  of  summer  furs!; 
but  she  is  probably  of  the  kind  that  ''could  never  know 
why,  and  never  could  understand." 

I  left  Barter  Island  with  much  regret  that  I  could  not 
spend  a  day  there,  there  were  so  many  other  things  I 
wanted  to  talk  to  Capt.  Hadley  about.  They  gave  us  a 
great  breakfast  of  oatmeal  and  hot  cakes,  and  were  able 
to  let  us  have  some  dog-feed,  and  all  hands  speeded  the 
parting  guests.  Our  destination  for  the  night  was  a  na- 
tive village  35  miles  away  named  Angun,  with  an  inter- 
mediate village  named  Oroktellik,  and  a  white  man's 
cabin  on  the  day's  run  also.  We  were  come  to  the  popu- 
lated part  of  the  north  coast.  But  to  avoid  sandbars  we 
turned  too  much  out  to  sea,  and  were  presently  amongst 
the  heaviest,  roughest  ice  of  the  winter,  getting  ourselves 
into  a  blind  lane  amidst  great  bergs  and  pinnacles  which 
gave  no  egress,  so  that  we  had  to  retrace  our  path. 
Here  was  a  sample  of  the  ice  for  which  these  seas  are 
noted.  In  an  effort  to  force  a  passage  we  came  near 
breaking  one  of  our  sleds  and  it  is  certain  that  vehicles 
for  travel  amongst  such  ice  must  be  immensely  heavy 
and  strong.  It  was  1.30  before  we  had  extricated  our- 
selves from  this  labyrinth,  and  in  another  half  hour  we 
reached  the  native  village  referred  to.  After  a  brief 
stop  to  shake  hands,  we  went  on  a  couple  of  miles  to  the 
cabin  of  an  old  trapper  named  Rasmussen  for  our  lunch, 
not  attracted  by  the  interior  of  the  igloo  we  entered ;  but 


308  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

George,  who  recognized  some  relatives,  stayed  behind 
to  eat  seal-meat,  for  which  he  had  become  very  hungry. 
After  an  hour  at  the  trapper's  cabin,  where  George  re- 
joined us,  we  pushed  on  for  three  hours  or  so  more,  and 
came  to  the  igloos  of  Angun,  our  night's  stop. 

Here  were  none  but  two  old  women  and  some  children 
(the  men  had  gone  to  Demarcation  Point  to  traffic  with 
the  trader  there),  and  they  were  most  kind  and  helpful. 
They  pulled  off  our  fur  boots  for  us,  turned  them  inside 
out  and  hung  them  up  to  dry  (an  attention  that  is  part 
of  the  hospitality  at  every  genuine  Eskimo  dwelling,  and 
almost  corresponds  to  the  water  for  washing  the  feet  of 
the  East) ;  they  helped  to  cook  dog-feed  and  insisted  on 
washing  our  dishes  after  supper.  Then  they  sought  our 
gear  over  to  find  if  any  mending  were  needed,  and  their 
needles  and  sinew  thread  were  soon  busy.  Nothing  could 
be  more  solicitous  and  motherly  than  the  conduct  of  these 
two  old  women,  and  when  I  gave  them  each  a  little  tin 
box  of  one  hundred  compressed  tea  tablets,  having  first 
proved  to  them  that  one  tablet  would  really  make  a  good 
cup  of  tea,  they  were  so  pleased  that  they  danced  about 
the  floor. 

Point  Manning,  Point  Sir  Henry  Martin,  Point  Griffin 
and  Point  Humphreys  of  Franklin  that  we  passed  this 
day,  I  can  tell  nothing  about  since  Franklin  tells  noth- 
ing, but  his  Beaufort  Bay,  which  he  named  on  the  3rd 
August,  1826,  for  Captain  (afterwards  Sir  Francis) 
Beaufort,  six  days  before  Beechey  honoured  the  same 
gentleman  on  the  west  coast,  has  had  a  singular  fortune, 
for  it  has  been  expanded  into  the  name  that  is  applied  to 
all  the  waters  north  of  Alaska.  At  any  rate  I  know  no 
other  origin  for  the  term  ''Beaufort  Sea"  which  is  now 
commonly  so  employed,  and  has  found  its  way  into  the 
more  modern  maps.  Some  convenient  term  was  needed 
to  distinguish  this  part  of  the  Arctic  Ocean,  and  I  con- 
jecture that  from  "the  seas  north  of  Beaufort  Bay** 
came  the  simplified  ' '  Beaufort  Sea. ' '  The  exploration  of 
the  Beaufort  Sea  is  likely  to  engage  attention  for  a  long 


<  s 
o   > 


H    i 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  309 

time  and  to  keep  the  memory  of  the  great  British 
hydrographer  green. 

On  the  other  side  of  Beaufort  Bay,  close  to  the  reef 
that  Franklin  found  so  heavily  packed  with  blocks  of  ice 
twenty  to  thirty  feet  high  that  is  known  as  Icy  Reef 
(though  I  cannot  find  that  he  names  it),  we  came  to  Ned 
Arey's  cabin  for  lunch.  A  big  pan  of  tender  caribou 
meat  was  immediately  set  cooking  in  the  oven  and  the 
table  was  soon  spread  with  a  fine  meal  to  which  we  did 
full  justice.  After  many  years'  whaling,  Arey  began 
prospecting  for  placer  gold  on  the  mountains  behind  this 
coast,  and  for  ten  years  pursued  his  search  from  the  Col- 
ville  river  to  Barter  Island  without  finding  anything  that 
he  thought  worth  while.  He  now  occupies  himself  with 
trapping  and  has  a  grown  married  son  who  is  a  mighty 
caribou  hunter  and  trapper,  besides  a  number  of  younger 
children,  so  that  the  establishment  has  something  of  a 
patriarchal  air.  We  were  told  that  this  son's — Gallegher 
Arey 's — catch  of  foxes  was  the  largest  of  the  whole  coast, 
going  well  above  one  hundred. 

I  found  Arey  a  very  modest,  intelligent  man,  full  of 
information  of  the  country  and  of  recent  explorations. 
He  was  the  first  who  gave  me  any  definite  information 
of  the  extent  of  Mr.  Stefansson's  discoveries,  though  in- 
deed I  was  too  much  preoccupied  with  other  matters 
during  our  brief  stay  at  Barter  Island  to  make  enquiries 
of  Capt.  Hadley.  One  interesting  thing  that  he  told  me 
was  that  on  one  of  his  whaling  cruises  he  had  been  90 
miles  northwest  of  Prince  Alfred  Point  in  Banks  Land; 
if  that  were  correct  he  had  passed  well  within  the  borders 
of  the  great  white  patch  of  unlcnown  expanse.  Like  the 
prospectors  of  the  interior  country  whose  unrecorded 
travels  preceded  any  explorations  of  surveyors,  it  may 
well  be  that  in  the  flourishing  days  of  whaling,  vessels 
again  and  again  invaded  this  unknown  region;  a  consid- 
eration which,  if  it  have  any  weight,  would  reduce  the 
likelihood  of  finding  land,  since  had  they  seen  land  they 
would  have  reported  it.    I  left  Ned  Arey  with  the  feeling 


310  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

that  he  was  entitled  to  his  island,  and  glad  that  Mr. 
Leffingwell  had  given  it  to  him. 

Almost  opposite  Arey's  place  on  Icy  Reef  is  the  mouth 
of  a  river  which  Franklin  passed  unnoticed.  It  was 
na  ed  much  later  the  Turner  river  by  General  Funston 
when  he  was  serving  in  Alaska,  in  honour  of  John  Henry 
Turner  of  the  coast  survey,  said  to  have  been  the  first 
white  man  who  ever  passed  from  the  valley  of  the  Por- 
cupine to  Herschel  Island.  I  think  Mr.  Turner  has  more 
Alaskan  place-names  to  his  credit  than  any  other  person; 
I  count  up  a  glacier,  an  island,  a  lake,  a  mountain  and 
a  river.    I  daresay  they  are  all  deserved. 

That  night,  the  3rd  April,  we  reached  Tom  Gordon's 
trading  station  near  Demarcation  Point,  four  or  five 
miles  within  Alaskan  territory.  This  new  station  is  an 
outpost  of  the  same  San  Francisco  fur  house  that  Mr. 
Brower  rep  sents  at  Point  Barrow,  and  they  have  yet 
another  eas^  ^1  Herschel  Island.  Mr.  Gordon  was  for  a 
number  of  years  resident  and  trading  at  Point  Barrow, 
and  this  was  his  first  season  here.  A  warehouse  and  a 
combined  store  and  dwelling,  still  unfinished,  rose  stark 
from  the  sandspit,  in  the  style  that  commerce  knows  not 
how  to  vary  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Arctic  Ocean. 

The  place  was  swarming  with  natives,  come  hither 
from  the  inland  rivers  and  mountains  for  the  spring  trad- 
ing, and  since  there  was  nowhere  else  to  stay  they  stayed 
at  the  store.  Gordon  seemed  to  keep  open  house  for  them, 
there  was  cooking  and  eating  going  on  all  the  time. 
Which  was  his  own  family,  I  never  really  distinguished 
amongst  the  numbers  of  women  and  children  who  all 
seemed  equally  at  home.  Several  of  the  women  wore  no 
garments  save  fur  trousers  and  a  woollen  shirt  with  two 
large  holes  cut  in  it  for  their  naked  breasts,  that  their 
children  might  apply  themselves  thereunto  with  the 
greater  facility. 

Tom  Gordon  I  found  a  man  of  the  extreme  good  nature 
and  hospitable  generosity  that  this  state  of  things  would 
imply.    "  had  difficulty  in  doing  business  with  him  at  all. 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  311 

I  desired  to  make  some  arrangements  for  George's  re- 
turn to  Point  Barrow  that  he  might  pick  up  here  his 
necessary  supplies  and  not  have  to  haul  them  all  the  way 
from  Herschel  Island,  for  four  hundred  odd  miles  is  a 
long  way  to  carry  everything  one  needs.  I  had  cached  a 
little  stuff  at  Flaxman  Island  for  him,  procured  from 
the  fugitive  trader;  I  wished  to  purchase  here  the  best 
part  of  what  he  would  still  need,  and  leave  it.  But  it  was 
hard  to  make  Mr.  Gordon  take  payment  for  anything.  I 
had  brought  a  sack  of  mail  for  him ;  the  first  he  had  had 
in  seven  months,  and  he  was  so  overjoyed  at  getting  it, 
at  hearing  news  of  the  world  and  of  his  long-time  home 
at  Point  Barrow,  that  he  wanted  to  give  me  everything 
I  tried  to  buy,  and  it  was  only  when  I  made  him  under- 
stand that  I  would  buy  what  I  wanted  at  Herschel  Island 
if  he  would  not  sell  it  to  me,  that  he  yielded. 

Crowded  beyond  all  comfort  as  the  place  was,  it  re- 
joiced me  that  the  people  were  here,  for  they  were, 
mostly,  of  the  roving,  inland  Eskimo  bands  of  the  Turner, 
the  Barter,  the  Hula-Hula  and  the  Canning  rivers,  that 
are  very  hard  to  visit  and  that  we  should  otherwise  not 
have  seen  at  all — as  we  did  not  see  any  of  the  Colville, 
Kupowra  or  Sawaniikto  people.  The  north  coast,  in  the 
main,  affords  no  winter  subsistence  comparable  with  that 
of  the  west  coast;  the  ice  commonly  holds  fast  too  far 
off  shore  for  sealing;  and  the  inhabitants  resort  to  the 
mountainous  inland  country  still  frequented  by  herds  of 
caribou. 

When  I  had  vainly  waited  a  long  time  to  see  if  the 
relay  cooking  and  eating  would  come  to  a  natural  term, 
Mr.  Gordon  advised  me  to  ''pitch  right  in  and  talk," 
and  with  George  as  the  best  interpreter  available  I  spoke 
to  them;  his  English  being  more  ample  along  religious 
lines  owing  to  his  constant  attendance  at  church  than 
one  would  gather  from  its  general  meagreness,  and,  as 
I  had  already  discovered,  his  knowledge  and  understand- 
ing of  the  fundamentals  of  Christianity,  fairly  good.  So 
I  spoke  as  simply  and  as  cheerfully  as  I  could  of  the 


312  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Kesurrection,  this  being  still  Easter  week;  of  the  meaning 
of  the  cross  and  the  empty  tomb.  They  stopped  their 
cooking  and  eating  and  washing  dishes  and  listened  with 
the  keenest  attention,  and  when  I  was  done  some  of 
them  asked  questions  that  set  me  going  over  the  whole 
ground  again,  so  that  I  suppose  I  was  talking  to  them  for 
nearly  two  hours. 

Amongst  the  motley  throng  in  ragged,  greasy  furs 
were  one  or  two  hard-faced  young  women  whose  tawdry 
velvet  cloaks  and  stained  silk  shirtwaists  spoke  of  the 
proximity  of  white  men  with  money  to  waste,  and  I  re- 
flected that  the  degradation  of  woman  bears  the  same 
unmistakable  marks  on  the  Arctic  coast  as  on  Broadway, 
and  that  perhaps  whaling  expeditions  are  not  the  only 
ones  that  tend  to  the  demoralization  of  the  Eskimos. 
Their  soiled  incongruous  finery  was  much  more  indecent 
than  the  naked  breasts  of  the  teeming  mothers. 

When  our  service  was  done,  and  George  and  I  had 
sung  a  hymn  from  the  Point  Barrow  book,  in  which  many 
tried  their  best  to  join,  the  cooking  and  eating  and  wash- 
ing dishes  were  resumed  and  it  was  long  after  midnight 
when  the  company  settled  down  to  rest,  the  whole  floor 
of  store  and  dwelling  being  covered  with  sleeping  forms, 
so  that  when  I  had  occasion  of  some  dog  disturbance  to 
arise  in  the  night,  it  was  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  I 
was  able  to  make  my  way  to  the  outer  door. 

Even  in  Franklin's  day  the  neighbourhood  of  Demarca- 
tion Point  was  much  resorted  to  by  the  Eskimos,  and 
since  the  establishment  of  the  trading-post  will  undoubt- 
edly stimulate  resort  and  in  all  probability  a  village  will 
be  built,  this  would  be  a  favourable  spot  for  a  mission  if 
it  were  not  for  the  complication  which  the  international 
boundary  and  the  proximity  to  Herschel  Island  intro- 
duce. Any  work  set  on  foot  here  by  the  Bishop  of  Alaska 
would  inevitably  aid  the  trader  at  this  place  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  at  the  other,  already 
hard  pressed  by  competition  east  and  west ;  that  is  to  say, 
by  drawing  people  hither  would  put  more  business  in  the 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  313 

hands  of  the  San  Francisco  furriers.  More  cogently, 
though  the  influence  upon  commerce  cannot  wisely  be 
ignored,  it  would  inevitably  impair  the  work  of  the 
Herschel  Island  mission  from  the  same  cause.  The 
most  feasible  arrangement  would  be  to  set  up  at 
this  spot  a  branch  of  the  Herschel  Island  mission, 
although  even  that  would  doubtless  arouse  com- 
mercial jealousy  and  ill-will.  The  intrusion  into  the 
missionary  jurisdiction  of  Alaska  would,  I  am  sure, 
be  not  only  allowed  but  welcomed  by  Bishop  Rowe, 
since  some  bands  of  Alaskan  natives  would  be  served 
that  there  is  no  present  possibility  of  reaching  from 
the  Alaskan  side.  Having  little  patience  with  such 
artificial  restraints  as  international  boundaries  in  mat- 
ters of  this  sort,  I  would  advocate  a  moderate  subsidy 
from  the  American  Board  of  Missions  to  the  Bishop  of 
the  Yukon  territory,  to  cover  the  cost  of  maintenance  of 
the  branch.  That  bishop  could  visit  Demarcation  Point 
on  the  journey  that  he  is  compelled  to  make  to  Herschel 
Island,  while  it  would  be  quite  impossible  for  the  Bishop 
of  Alaska  to  visit  it  at  all.  Then  a  second  man  at 
Herschel  Island,  with  a  roving  commission,  could  follow 
the  migrations  of  the  inland  folk,  with  a  sub-base  at  this 
place.  I  call  to  mind  the  noble  disregard  of  political 
boundaries  with  which  the  missionaries  of  the  Church  of 
England  evangelized  the  Yukon  country  long  ago.  What 
have  political  boundaries  to  do  with  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity? 

We  did  not  leave  until  10  the  next  morning,  and  in  an 
hour  we  passed  within  sight  of  the  monument  erected  by 
the  international  survey  a  few  years  ago,  and  into  British 
territory.  In  passing  the  boundary  we  passed  the  mouth 
of  a  river — one  of  many  small  streams  that  debouch  upon 
this  coast — which  ''being  the  most  westerly  river  in  the 
British  dominions  on  this  coast,  I  named  it  the  'Clarence* 
in  honour  of  His  Eoyal  Highness  the  Lord  High  Ad- 
miral," writes  Franklin.  The  duke  of  Clarence  four 
years  later  became  king  of  England  as  William  IV. 


314  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Another  hour  or  so  brought  us  to  a  tiny  native  settle- 
ment named  Ky-nyer-o-vik,  and  here  we  stopped  for 
lunch.  Four  hours  more  brought  us  to  Laughing  Joe's 
home,  with  many  people  in  one  igloo  (including  two  more 
silk-and- velvet-clad,  cigarette-smoking  girls), and  here  we 
lay  for  the  night.  It  was  disconcerting  to  find  our  mani- 
fest-prostitute girls,  who  were  daughters  of  the  house,  in 
no  way  regarded  askance  by  the  others,  to  find  them  join- 
ing fervently  in  the  devotions;  but  the  introduction  of 
religion  into  the  life,  the  securing  of  the  response  in  con- 
duct as  well  as  the  response  in  emotion,  has  always  been 
the  difficult  slow  task  of  the  missionary.  It  is  but  a  very 
few  years  ago  that  the  first  convert  was  baptized  on  this 
coast.  The  whalers,  grafting  the  sordidness  of  gain  upon 
the  native  looseness  of  sexual  life,  made  prostitutes  long 
before  the  missionaries  made  Christians. 

Since  we  left  Barter  Island  the  weather  had  been  much 
more  pleasant,  the  wind  either  behind  us  or  in  the  south. 
The  days  were  now  so  long  that  there  was  no  need  to 
hurry;  the  surface  was  without  loose  snow  and  fairly 
smooth,  and  there  began  to  be  some  pleasure  in  travel 
after  the  pain  and  discomfort  of  the  earlier  stages. 
Moreover  to  have  a  comfortable  place  to  stay  at  night  is 
in  itself  an  immense  gain. 

But  on  the  last  day  of  our  eastern  travel,  the  long  day 
that  took  us  from  Laughing  Joe's  to  Herschel  Island, 
the  wind  had  swung  back  into  its  old  quarter  again, 
though  rather  more  dead  ahead  than  usual,  with  the  ther- 
mometer at  40°  below  zero  when  we  started.  The  mini- 
mum of  the  night  had  been  51  °  below,  which  is  * '  some  cold 
for  the  fifth  of  April"  as  Walter  said.  I  recalled  that 
I  had  read  almost  with  incredulity  in  Bartlett's  book 
that  on  his  journey  down  the  Siberian  coast,  when  he  had 
left  Wrangell  Island  to  seek  rescue  for  the  Karluk  sur- 
vivors, he  had  experienced  a  temperature  of  — 65°  at 
the  same  time  of  year;  but  since  it  is  known  that  the 
Asiatic  coast  is  a  good  deal  colder  than  the  American, 
it  may  even  have  been  so,  though  the  temperature  must 


FLAXMAN  AND  HERSCHEL  ISLANDS  316 

have  been  a  minimum  reading  at  night,  since  the  sun  be- 
gins to  have  a  good  deal  of  power  in  these  latitudes  in 
April.  At  noon,  in  the  direct  sun,  the  thermometer  stood 
at  — 15°,  which  means  that  his  rays  raised  the  tempera- 
ture 36°  above  the  night  minimum;  but  it  was  still  bit- 
terly cold  since  the  wind  was  inevasible.  For  the  first 
time  during  the  whole  winter  we  did  not  stop  to  eat;  we 
had  neither  bite  nor  sup  from  morning  till  night;  I  had 
on  my  complete  furs  with  my  drill  parkee  over  the  heavy 
fur  artigi  and  a  scarf  wrapped  again  and  again  round 
my  face,  yet  I  froze  the  bridge  of  my  nose  and  the  space 
tween  my  eyes. 

At  length  we  crossed  from  the  mainland  to  the  island, 
crossed  a  sandspit  and  were  on  the  homestretch;  but  it 
was  a  wretchedly  tedious  home  stretch,  for  the  island  is 
a  long  one  and  the  town  near  its  eastern  extremity.  Mile 
after  mile,  mile  after  mile,  we  passed  along  the  bluffs  of 
the  mountainous  island,  until  I  thought  in  the  prolonged 
misery  of  that  wind  that  the  town  was  a  myth. 

By  about  four  o  'clock,  our  time,  but  six  o  'clock  by  the 
time  kept  at  the  place,  on  the  4th  April  we  reached  the 
Eskimo  village,  and  mission  station,  and  Northwest 
Mounted  Police  post,  at  Herschel  Island,  and  were  most 
kindly  welcomed  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fry  and  his  wife,  who 
had  been  expecting  us  for  some  time.  So  safely  ended, 
thank  God,  the  longest  and  most  cheerless  stretch  of  our 
winter  journey.  In  the  prospective  itinerary  that  I  had 
drawn  up  before  leaving  Fort  Yukon,  I  had  set  the  5th 
April  as  the  earliest,  and  the  15th  as  the  latest,  date  for 
arriving  here,  so  we  were  well  within  our  schedule  and 
might  congratulate  ourselves  on  having  made  a  very  good 
journey  from  Point  Barrow. 

Note:  The  name  of  the  Hula-Hula  river,  which  I  mentioned  near  Ned 
Arey's  place,  was  not  elucidated  because  for  long  I  could  find  no  explana- 
tion of  it.  I  have  now  learned  that  it  was  named  from  a  great  dance  held 
there  one  winter,  arranged  by  some  sailors  from  Honolulu  wintering  at 
Herschel  Island,  to  which  women  were  gathered  from  all  around  It  seems 
to  have  been  a  notorious  occasion  of  drunkenness  and  profligacy. 


IX 


HERSCHEL  ISLAND  AND  THE  JOURNEY  TO 
FORT  YUKON 


IX 

HEESCHEL  ISLAND  AND  THE  JOURNEY  TO 
FORT   YUKON 

There  is,  I  think,  no  question  that  the  Herschel  for 
whom  Sir  John  Franklin  named  this  island  was  Sir  John 
Frederick  William  of  that  name,  the  scarcely  less  famous 
son  of  the  famous  astronomer-royal  to  George  III. 
Until  I  looked  up  the  dates  and  facts  of  these  two  lives 
I  had  supposed  it  was  the  father  who  was  thus  distin- 
guished, but  the  elder  Herschel  died  in  1822  and  it  is 
Franklin's  habit  to  say  "the  late"  when  he  confers  a 
posthumous  honour.  I  am  sure  if  Franklin  had  thought 
of  the  trouble  and  vexation  that  would  attend  the  efforts 
of  a  humble  tracer  of  his  footsteps,  nearly  a  century  later, 
to  attribute  his  compliments  to  their  rightful  recipients, 
he  would  have  been  more  precise.  I  am  convinced  that 
the  younger  Herschel  is  intended  because  the  name  of  his 
close  friend  and  associate,  Charles  Babbage,  of  calculat- 
ing machine  fame,  is  given  to  a  river  a  little  farther  to 
the  east.  These  two  young  men,  with  a  third,  George 
Peacock,  afterwards  Dean  of  Ely,  made  a  compact  while 
undergraduates  at  Cambridge,  to  strive  for  the  advance- 
ment of  mathematical  science,  and  to  ''do  their  best  to 
leave  the  world  wiser  than  they  found  it."  They  lived 
to  execute  it  in  notable  degree,  all  three  making  very 
valuable  contributions  to  the  science  of  numbers.  Sir 
John  Herschel  was  a  scientist  of  the  noblest  and  most 
attractive  type.  Not  only  was  he  one  of  the  greatest 
astronomers  (for  he  and  his  father  together  mapped  the 
whole  heavens)  and  a  distinguished  chemist — but  he  was 
a  man  of  letters  as  well,  who  would  have  been,  like  Dr. 
Johnson,  "respected  for  his  literature"  had  he  possessed 
no  other  claims  to  respect.    He  amused  the  leisure  of  his 

319 


320  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

declining  years  by  translating  Homer's  Iliad  into  Eng- 
lish verse — that  favourite  diversion  of  scholarly  English- 
men— and  he  made  English  translations  from  Schiller. 
The  menace  to  all  that  is  sweet  and  gracious  in  life  of 
the  narrow,  dogmatic  scientist  who  knows  nothing  but 
''science"  had  not  arisen  in  Herschel's  day.  But  perhaps 
the  greatest  popular  interest  that  attaches  to  Herschel's 
name,  now  that  we  are  all  amateur  photographers,  is 
his  discovery  that  hyposulphite  of  soda  will  dissolve  the 
salts  of  silver  that  have  not  been  affected  by  light — a 
discovery  that  rendered  modern  photography  possible; 
and  it  was  he  who  first  applied  the  terms  ''positive"  and 
"negative"  to  the  natural  and  reverse  photographic 
images  respectively:  so  that  every  picture-maker  who 
talks  about  his  "negatives"  is  quoting  Sir  John  Herschel. 
It  is  matter  of  gratification  to  me  that  Franklin  gave  the 
illustrious  names  of  Flaxman  the  sculptor  and  draughts- 
man, and  Herschel  the  astronomer  and  chemist,  to  the 
two  chief  islands  of  the  Arctic  coast  within  the  compass 
of  his  journey. 

The  settlement  of  Herschel  Island  today  is  small  and 
sedate,  and  little  beside  some  abandoned  store  buildings 
remain  to  speak  of  the  days  when  it  was  "the  world's 
last  jumping-off  place"  as  I  heard  it  described,  where 
no  law  existed  and  no  writs  ran,  a  paradise  of  those  who 
reject  all  restraint  upon  appetite  and  all  responsibility 
for  conduct ;  when  a  dozen  ships  and  five  or  six  hundred 
men  of  their  crews  wintered  here,  and  scoured  the  coasts 
for  Eskimo  women.  I  do  not  think  it  extravagant  to  say 
that  the  scenes  of  riotous  drunkenness  and  lust  which  this 
island  has  witnessed  have  probably  rarely  been  sur- 
passed. Though  not  much  in  the  way  of  hearing  such 
stories,  I  have  heard  enough  to  think  that  this  statement 
is  justified. 

Amundsen  is  always  very  discreet,  and  in  1906  the 
"boom"  was  already  passing.  Moreover  he  was  the 
guest  of  the  whalers,  but  one  may  read  his  opinion  of  the 
"motley  crowd  of  mulattoes,  negroes,  yellow  and  white 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  321 

men'*  between  the  lines  when  it  is  not  openly  expressed. 
"I  prefer  not  to  mention  the  many  and  queer  tales  I 
heard  during  my  sojourn  here,"  he  says.  He  commiser- 
ates with  Archdeacon  Whittaker,  who  was  then  in  resi- 
dence with  his  wife  and  children,  upon  his  difficult  task. 

In  April,  1918,  it  had  a  police  post,  a  mission  and  a 
store,  with  their  meagre  staffs,  and  I  think  no  more  than 
two  or  three  other  white  residents,  while  the  Eskimos 
were  much  scattered  at  their  trapping  and  hunting,  so 
that  only  two  score  or  so  were  at  home. 

Two  days  before  our  arrival,  Mr.  Stefansson,  who  had 
been  lying  sick  here  most  of  the  winter,  had  started 
across  country  for  our  hospital  at  Fort  Yukon,  between 
three  and  four  hundred  miles  away,  with  several  sleds 
and  teams,  four  natives,  the  only  constable  at  the  post 
besides  the  inspector,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fry;  having  sent 
an  express  across  to  our  physician.  Dr.  Burke,  asking  him 
to  meet  him  at  the  Rampart  House,  following  a  previous 
one  that  asked  the  doctor  to  come  on  here.  Mr.  Fry, 
finding  that  he  was  only  in  the  way  with  so  many  at- 
tendants, begged  off  at  the  end  of  the  first  day  and  was 
just  returned.  I  had  made  up  my  mind  that  I  would  do 
my  utmost  to  persuade  Mr.  Stefansson  to  that  course, 
and  had  thought  to  take  him  over  with  us !  It  seems  to 
have  been  typhoid  fever  from  which  he  had  suffered, 
Constable  Lamont  dying  of  the  same  complaint  early  in 
the  new  year,  and  the  convalescence  from  typhoid  fever 
is  often  attended  by  complications  and  tedious  digestive 
derangements.  Now,  how  came  that  disease  to  Herschel 
Island,  selecting  just  two  cases  as  it  had  done  the  previ- 
ous September  at  Fort  Yukon? 

We  lay  four  days  at  Herschel  Island,  four  days  of 
sweet  rest  and  refreshment,  and  of  high  appreciation  of 
a  white  woman's  hospitable  housekeeping.  There  is  no 
stint,  there  is  almost  no  limit,  in  Arctic  hospitality;  go 
amongst  whom  one  will,  all  that  they  have  is  yours.  But 
there  is  a  charm  about  the  amenities  of  civilized  and 
cultivated  domestic  life  that  is  the  richer  for  its  rarity  in 


322  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

these  parts.  And  there  is  deep  satisfaction  in  sojourn- 
ing with  those  whose  hearts  are  wholly  congruous  with 
one 's  own  in  aims  and  purposes.  "We  called  on  the  police 
inspector  and  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  agent,  and  I 
tried  to  buy  some  little  distinctive  Hudson's  Bay  wares, 
as  the  gay,  tightly  woven  wooUen  scarves  so  much  prized 
by  the  Yukon  Indians,  for  gifts  when  I  was  returned. 
But,  whether  owing  to  the  war  or  not  I  cannot  say,  there 
was  lack  of  all  such  stuff;  there  was  nothing  of  the 
admirable  woollen  weaves  for  which  the  company  is 
noted.  The  Hudson's  Bay  method  of  business  is  primi- 
tive beyond  what  would  be  tolerated  anywhere  in  Alaska. 
The  shop  or  store  is  wholly  unwarmed — for  fear  of  fire ; 
such  canned  goods  as  would  spoil  by  freezing  are  kept 
in  the  dwelling  and  there  is  no  stove  or  any  means  of 
heating  the  store.  This,  I  was  informed,  is  the  custom 
at  every  Hudson's  Bay  post.  No  trader  who  had  a  com- 
petitor could  afford  to  treat  his  customers  in  such  a  way. 
It  was  not  particularly  cold  weather  while  we  were  at 
Herschel  Island ;  indeed,  the  first  touch  of  spring  was  in 
the  air ;  but  the  inside  of  the  store  was  like  a  frozen  vault. 
Yet  whatever  the  temperature,  he  who  would  trade  at  the 
store  must  stand  and  make  his  purchases  unwarmed. 

Later,  when  we  were  buying  supplies  for  our  further 
journey,  everything  was  put  up  in  just  such  paper  bags 
as  one  would  find  in  a  shop  ''outside,"  instead  of  in  the 
cotton  sacks  that  are  universal  throughout  Alaska.  Now, 
paper  bags  are  simply  impossible  receptacles  for  sugar 
and  rice  and  such  things  in  a  sled.  The  prices  were  as 
high  in  proportion  as  the  Alaskan  prices — in  either  case 
''all  that  the  trade  will  stand";  and  one  missed  the 
little  open-handed  mitigations  of  the  extravagant  cost 
of  everything  to  which  one  is  accustomed  in  Alaska.  I 
wondered  what  the  Eskimos  did  for  dishcloths ;  the  cot- 
ton sacks  of  the  interior  trader  being  the  steady  resource 
of  the  Indians  for  that  purpose, — and  of  most  white 
men  too. 

The  principal  commodity  of  these  parts,  just  as  at 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  323 

Point  Barrow,  is  furs,  and  of  them  lynx  and  white  fox 
the  chief,  with  the  latter  largely  preponderating.  It 
seems  that  it  is  only  when  the  lynx  is  disappearing  from 
the  interior  that  it  is  found  on  the  coast,  and  this  was  the 
case  just  now.  But  the  white  fox  is  an  Arctic  coast  ani- 
mal, is,  indeed,  as  I  was  told  by  trapper  after  trapper, 
really  an  ice  animal,  just  as  the  polar  bear ;  and  subsists 
mainly  by  playing  jackal  to  the  polar  bear's  lion,  follow- 
ing in  his  tracks  and  cleaning  up  after  his  kill.  The  men 
who  made  the  largest  catch  of  white  foxes  around  Point 
Barrow  killed  seals,  left  them  lying  on  the  ice,  and  set 
their  traps  around. 

The  last  reports  from  the  fur  market  received  at  Point 
Barrow  quoted  white  foxes  at  thirty  dollars  and  lynx  at 
twenty-five.  Mr.  Brower  was  paying  twenty  for  foxes; 
at  Demarcation  Point  Mr.  Gordon  was  paying  fifteen,  and 
here  at  Herschel  Island  the  Hudson's  Bay  agent  was 
paying  twelve,  and  about  the  same  for  lynx — all  of  these 
prices  *'in  trade"  of  course,  so  that  there  was  the  large 
profit  on  goods  sold  as  well  as  the  profit  on  the  furs. 
There  is  no  more  lucrative  business  than  fur  trading 
upon  a  rising  market,  and  when  the  market  rises  by  leaps 
and  bounds  as  it  has  done  for  the  last  three  years,  it  be- 
comes an  occupation  that  might  commend  itself  even  to 
''Get-Rich-Quick"  people  like  J.  Rufus  Wallingford. 
Walter  was  using  a  lynx  robe  sewn  together  as  a  sleeping- 
bag,  holding  it  warmer  than  any  caribou  or  reindeer  bag 
could  be,  as  I  daresay  it  was,  and  at  any  rate  it  saved  the 
buying  of  another  bag.  Now  the  fifteen  good  skins  of 
which  that  bag  was  made  were  bought  in  1915  or  1916 
at  five  or  six  dollars  a  skin,  and,  with  the  tanning  of  the 
skins,  the  blanket  lining  and  the  making,  the  robe  cost  me 
between  ninety  and  a  hundred  dollars,  which  was  the 
standard  price  in  the  interior  for  any  good,  large,  warm, 
robe.  Had  I  bought  the  skins  one  year  before  I  did,  I 
could  have  had  them  at  $3.50  apiece,  and  the  robe  would 
have  cost  no  more  than  $55  or  $60.  But  when  I  am  writ- 
ing, the  price  of  lynx  skins  has  risen  so  enormously  that 


324  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

the  stores  here  at  Fort  Yukon  are  actually  paying  forty 
dollars  apiece  for  them,  so  that  if  I  were  to  have  such  a 
robe  made  now  the  skins  alone  would  cost  six  hundred 
dollars  I  The  robe  has  been  in  use  on  the  trail  for  three 
winters,  but  it  is  not  much  the  worse  for  it,  and  I  have  a 
feeling  of  resentment  that  the  vagaries  of  fashion  should 
place  me  in  the  position  of  using  such  preposterously 
expensive  bedding.  It  almost  goes  without  saying  that 
this  startling  increase  in  price  has  proceeded  side  by 
side  with  a  steady  dwindling  in  the  number  of  skins  taken, 
or  else  every  native  community  would  be  rolling  in 
wealth,  and  now  that  the  high-water  mark  of  extrava- 
gance has  been  reached,  there  are  no  more  skins  at  all. 
Instead  of  the  six  or  seven  thousand  skins  that  would 
be  bought  by  the  traders  at  Fort  Yukon  in  an  ordinary 
year,  this  year  they  have  bought  less  than  three  hun- 
dred.* The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  white  fox,  reports 
from  the  coast  at  this  time  (April,  1919)  indicating  that 
there  has  been  virtually  no  catch  at  all  the  past  winter. 
Like  all  wild  creatures,  the  lynx  and  the  fox  come  and 
go,  gradually  increasing  and  then  suddenly  diminishing 
almost  to  disappearance,  but  I  am  of  opinion  that  the  in- 
tensive trapping  stimulated  by  the  unheard-of  prices  of 
the  last  two  seasons  has  swept  the  country  so  clean  that  it 
is  doubtful  if  enough  remain  for  propagation. 

When  it  is  remembered  that  the  Hudson's  Bay  post 
at  Herschel  Island  is  flanked  on  the  west  at  Demarcation 
Point  and  again  on  the  east  at  Shingle  Point  by  a  sta- 
tion of  a  San  Francisco  fur  house,  and  that  independent 
fur  buyers  from  the  interior  make  visits  every  winter  to 
the  coast,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Great  Company's 
monopoly  is  altogether  of  the  past,  and  it  may  be  ex- 
pected that  it  will  be  compelled  to  meet  competition  in 
prices,  and  perhaps  adopt  a  more  accommodating  atti- 
tude towards  its  customers ;  the  ''take  it  or  leave  it"  days 

•  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  furs  from  many  thousand  square 
miles  find  their  way  to  Fort  Yukon:  it  is  the  chief  fur  market  of  interior 
Alaska. 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  325 

are  done.  I  hope,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  pressure  will 
not  be  so  great  as  to  tempt  it  to  undermine  the  mainstay 
of  its  present  strength,  its  reputation  for  handling  noth- 
ing but  ''good  goods,"  and  on  the  other,  that  it  may  be 
great  enough  to  cause  it  to  install  stoves  in  its  stores, 
and  perhaps  even  lay  in  a  stock  of  cotton  bags.  From 
the  agent,  Mr.  Harding,  we  had  every  kindness  and  con- 
sideration, and  I  found  him  the  proud  possessor  of  the 
first  edition  of  Sir  Alexander  Mackenzie's  Voyages 
Through  the  Continent  of  North  America — a  very  valu- 
able book  nowadays — in  which  the  famous  journey  to  the 
mouth  of  the  great  river  that  bears  his  name  is  de- 
scribed. My  own  edition  was  a  wretched  cheap  reprint, 
and  I  enjoyed  re-reading  the  book,  which  he  kindly  lent 
me,  in  the  dignity  of  the  original  quarto.  Cheap  re- 
prints with  their  poor  type  and  their  absence  of  plates 
and  maps  are  not  the  same  thing  as  the  original  edition. 
Another  book  that  I  found  here,  and  read  through  with 
the  greatest  interest,  was  David  Hanbury's  Sport  and 
Travel  in  the  Northland  of  Canada,  a  very  valuable  ac- 
count of  adventurous  travel  through  the  Barren  Lands  to 
the  Coronation  Gulf.  Cowie's  The  Company  of  Adven- 
turers (another  Hudson's  Bay  book),  I  also  found  here 
and  devoured ;  and  was  particularly  glad  to  have  lit  upon 
Hanbury. 

It  was  pleasant  to  me  to  find  both  the  Hudson's  Bay 
agent,  and  the  missionary,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fry,  intelligently 
interested  in  the  geography  and  exploration  of  the  coun- 
try, for  it  is  surprising  how  little  such  interest  is  mani- 
fested all  around  this  coast.  The  walls  of  the  mission 
house  were  spread  with  the  excellent  Arctic  charts  of  the 
British  Admiralty,  issued  after  the  last  of  the  Franklin 
search  expedition  of  the  fifties,  which  there  has  been  very 
little  occasion  to  add  to  or  alter,  save  for  Amundsen's 
mapping  of  the  east  coast  of  Victoria  Island,  until  this 
present  time;  and  I  found  Mr.  Stefansson's  three  new 
islands  of  the  Parry  archipelago  carefully  inserted  in 
their  places.    Naturally,  Mr.  Stefansson's  presence  had 


326  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

stimulated  enquiry,  but  Mr.  Fry  brought  those  charts 
with  him  when  he  came  to  Herschel  Island.  I  wish  that 
every  missionary  would  show  as  much  interest  in  the 
country  to  which  he  is  sent;  there  is  valuable  work  yet 
to  be  done  in  many  lines  in  many  quarters  of  the  globe 
that  a  properly  equipped  missionary  may  very  well  do 
without  any  interference  with  his  main  occupation,  in- 
deed with  distinct  furtherance  thereof :  and  I  am  jealous 
for  the  tradition  of  missionary  contribution  to  the 
world's  knowledge  of  the  world.  In  some  respects  a  mis- 
sionary of  general  education  is  better  fitted  for  such  work 
than  a  scientific  specialist  who  is  all  at  sea  outside  his 
specialty. 

On  the  Sunday  that  we  spent  at  Herschel  Island  I  was 
given  the  opportunity  of  speaking  twice  to  the  natives, 
through  a  fairly  good  interpreter,  and  of  addressing  the 
whites  who  assembled  in  the  afternoon.  I  was  glad  to 
see  that  the  whole  native  service  was  in  the  vernacular 
tongue,  mainly  the  work  of  Archdeacon  Whittaker,  who 
was  here  for  a  number  of  years,  who  also  translated 
many  selections  of  Scripture,  and  of  noticing  the  hearty 
and  intelligent  participation  of  the  Eskimos  therein. 
Man  after  man  stood  up  and  read  aloud  from  the  Scrip- 
ture selections.  At  the  white  service  the  one  prisoner 
at  the  police  station,  the  Eussian  Jew  to  whose  enormi- 
ties I  have  already  referred,  was  present  by  special  per- 
mission, and  at  its  conclusion  he  came  forward  and  unctu- 
ously thanked  me.  I  know  not  when  I  have  been  more 
repulsively  impressed. 

But  what  engaged  my  keenest  interest  at  Herschel 
Island  was  Mr.  Fry's  account  of  the  activities  of  the  two 
men  far  to  the  eastward,  Messrs.  Hester  and  Gerling, 
who  have  been  engaged  for  some  years  past  in  the 
evangelization  of  the  "Copper  Eskimos'*  the  so-called 
''Blond  Eskimos"  of  the  sensational  newspapers  a  few 
years  ago,  ranging  about  the  Dolphin  and  Union  Straits 
and  Coronation  Gulf.  Here  are  two  missionaries  that 
I  can  find  it  in  my  heart  to  envy.     Set  down  amongst 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  327 

an  entirely  primitive  people,  only  now  making  acquaint- 
ance with  the  white  men,  with  the  task  and  the  oppor- 
tunity of  at  once  enlightening  and  protecting  them,  what 
an  immensely  important  position  they  fill,  what  con- 
sequences to  the  future  of  these  folk  hang  upon  the 
execution  of  their  duties!  And  who  that  heard  the 
vile  stories  of  the  doings  of  this  special  malefactor 
here  present,  not  to  mention  any  others,  amongst 
these  very  people,  can  question  the  imperative  need  of 
sending  men  of  Christian  character  and  courage  to  them? 
A  fugitive  from  justice,  with  a  reward  offered  for  his 
apprehension  by  the  Russian  authorities,  while  yet  there 
were  Russian  authorities,  for  shooting  a  Cossack  coast 
guard  in  some  liquor-smuggling  affray,  he  was  brought  to 
book  here  in  a  very  mild  way  because  he  had  defrauded 
the  Canadian  revenue  by  a  false  declaration;  but  for  his 
crimes  against  the  natives  was  like  to  go  scot-free  owing 
to  the  difficulty  of  procuring  testimony  from  so  far  off. 
I  began  to  have  a  great  longing  to  go  on  to  the  east- 
ward and  visit  Messrs.  Hester  and  Gerling  and  see  for 
myself  the  work  they  are  doing  and  the  people  amongst 
whom  they  are  doing  it;  and  in  the  perverse  way  of  one 
who  wants  to  do  what  he  knows  must  not  be  done,  I  dwelt 
upon  the  admirable  sledding  from  this  time  forward  even 
well  into  the  month  of  June  that  the  Arctic  coast  afforded. 
It  would  be  but  another  stretch  of  five  or  six  hundred 
miles  and  the  pleasant  season  of  travel  yet  to  come. 
There  was  a  Hudson ^s  Bay  post  in  the  Bailie  Islands 
off  Cape  Bathurst  and  all  the  way  certainly  more  human 
habitation  than  we  had  from  Point  Barrow  to  Flaxman 
Island.  My  money  was  all  gone,  but  that  did  not  matter. 
The  Hudson's  Bay  would  give  me  credit  for  anything 
I  wanted.  One  of  the  advantages  of  long  residence  and 
wide  acquaintance  in  the  north  is  that  one  can  travel  all 
the  winter  without  money  if  necessary.  Walter  would 
go  with  me,  I  knew,  if  I  put  it  up  to  him — although  I  had 
already  divined  that  he  had  new  and  important  interests 
at  Fort  Yukon  and  was  eager  to  return — and  we  could 


328  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

get  a  native  guide  from  place  to  place.  And  the  getting 
back? — well,  of  course,  there  was  the  getting  back.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  get  back  over  the  snow,  we  were 
pushing  that  to  the  limit  already.  It  would  be  along  in 
the  summer  at  the  earliest,  and  perhaps  not  till  the  next 
winter ;  but  we  would  get  back  sooner  or  later,  please  God. 

I  have  often  wished  that  I  had  a  spice  of  recklessness 
in  my  composition  and  were  not  of  so  ingrained  and 
docile  a  conscientiousness ;  if  I  had  I  think  I  should  have 
gone  on  to  see  Messrs.  Hester  and  Gerling.  Once  before 
I  had  turned  back  when  the  Arctic  coast  lay  temptingly 
before  me,  twelve  years  ago  at  Kotzebue  Sound :  but  then 
I  had  reasonable  expectation  of  another  opportunity,  of 
which  expectation  this  present  journey  was  the  fulfil- 
ment :  this  time  I  knew  that  in  all  probability  there  would 
never  be  another  chance. 

But — (and,  as  Abraham  Cowley  says,  *'but"  is  *'the 
rust  that  spoils  the  good  metal  it  grows  upon")  a  hos- 
pital that  is  always  in  need  of  funds — and  where  is  the 
hospital  that  is  not? — is  a  great  clog  upon  one's  freedom 
of  movement.  I  was  weary  with  more  than  five  months' 
travel,  yet  I  think  I  would  have  given  my  ears  to  have  been 
free  to  go  on  to  the  Copper  Eskimos  and  the  men  whose 
work  for  them  I  admire  so  greatly.  Well,  there  was 
naught  for  it  save  the  same  author's  remedy  in  the  same 
essay — ^which  I  like  to  read  over  occasionally.  "If  a  man 
cannot  attain  unto  the  length  of  his  wishes,  he  has  his 
remedy  in  cutting  them  shorter, ' '  and  I  turned  from  that 
tempting  goal  in  the  east  and  addressed  myself  to  the 
preparations  for  the  journey  to  the  south. 

Before  leaving  Fort  Yukon  I  had  arranged  with  the 
trader  at  the  Rampart  House  to  send  across  a  native  as 
a  guide  for  us  from  Herschel  Island  to  the  Porcupine. 
He  was  to  be  here  on  the  5th  and  was  to  await  us  until 
the  15th.  But  he  was  not  come:  as  I  learned  later  the 
man  who  had  undertaken  the  job  fell  sick,  and  another 
could  not  then  be  procured. 

There  were  two  routes  that  we  might  follow:  one  by 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  329 

the  Old  Crow  river  and  the  Kampart  House — by  which 
Mr.  Stefansson's  party  had  just  gone:  the  other  by  the 
Herschel  Island  or  Firth  river  and  the  Colleen,  of  which 
the  latter  would  bring  us  to  the  Porcupine  river  nearly 
an  hundred  miles  below  the  Rampart  House.  I  had  no 
business  at  the  Eampart  House,  especially  as  I  learned 
that  there  was  neither  grub  nor  dog-feed  there,  and  I 
decided  we  would  attempt  the  other. 

Our  plan,  therefore,  was  to  go  up  the  Herschel  Island 
river  to  its  head,  where  we  were  well  assured  we  should 
find  a  little  band  of  Eskimos;  procure  one  of  them  to 
conduct  us  over  the  divide  to  the  headwaters  of  the  Col- 
leen, pursue  that  stream  to  its  confluence  with  the  Porcu- 
pine, and  then  that  river  to  its  confluence  with  the  Yukon, 
at  which  point  Fort  Yukon  is  situated.  '' Simple  as  fall- 
ing off  a  log":  as  one  of  our  Herschel  Island  advisers 
remarked.    But  falling  off  a  log  may  be  painful  too. 

Several  seals  purchased  to  cut  up  for  dog-feed,  and  a 
supply  of  rolled  oats  and  blubber  to  cook  together  for 
them  when  the  fresh  meat  was  done,  our  grub  box  re- 
plenished, and  all  preparations  made,  we  were  fortunate 
enough  to  find  an  old  Eskimo  who  went  by  the  name  of 
Billy  Bump  from  a  wen  on  his  forehead,  and  his  daugh- 
ter, who  were  returning  to  the  head  of  the  Herschel 
Island  river.  We  carried  a  great  many  letters  and  tele- 
grams to  despatch  from  Fort  Yukon,  for  this  place  has 
only  two  regular  mails  in  the  year,  one  in  the  winter  by 
police  patrol  from  Dawson,  and  one  in  the  summer  by  the 
supply  ship;  and  we  had  a  number  of  commissions  to 
execute  upon  the  Yukon. 

We  started  out  on  Wednesday,  the  10th  April,  quite  a 
little  company,  Walter  and  I  and  Billy  Bump  and  his 
daughter,  George  returning  to  Point  Barrow  and  one  of 
Mr.  Stefansson's  men  going  with  George  as  far  as  Barter 
Island;  and  our  path  lay  together  for  about  six  miles, 
until  it  came  time  for  us  to  strike  south  at  the  west  end 
of  the  island. 

It  gave  me  pleasure  to  be  able  to  send  a  letter  to  Mr. 


330  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Brower,  telling  him  that  George  had  been  entirely  satis- 
factory, and  to  realize  that,  if  he  hastened,  he  would  yet 
be  back  in  time  for  the  whaling  and  so  would  have  missed 
nothing  by  accompanying  us.  Both  Walter  and  I  had 
grovm.  attached  to  him;  he  was  always  cheerful,  always 
willing,  always  helpful.  We  bade  him  a  cordial  good-bye, 
and  I  told  him  that  when  next  he  had  to  build  snow- 
houses  I  hoped  he  would  have  his  wife  along  to  help  him; 
to  which  he  replied  with  a  twinkle,  ^*I  hope  so  too."  We 
gave  him  everything  of  our  equipment  that  we  could 
spare,  and  I  saw  to  it  that  he  was  amply  provided  for 
his  return. 

A  calm,  bright,  warm  day  attended  our  departure  for 
the  South:  as  though  the  Arctic  coast  were  taking  the 
last  opportunity  of  informing  us  that  its  weather  could 
be  pleasant.  The  previous  night 's  minimum  temperature 
had  been  — 5°;  today's  maximum  was  20°,  There  was  a 
long  flat  to  cross  before  we  reached  the  mouth  of  the  river 
and  our  course  was  slow,  for  the  old  man's  sled  was 
heavily  loaded  and  he  was  continually  stopping  to  smoke 
and  rest,  but  almost  as  soon  as  we  came  to  the  hollow 
scooped  out  in  the  sand  which  marked  the  river's  bed  and 
had  dropped  into  it  and  pursued  it  a  turn  or  two,  we  came 
to  willows,  the  first  growth  of  any  kind  that  we  had  seen 
for  four  months. 

This  river,  known  locally  as  the  Herschel  Island  river, 
and  on  the  maps  as  the  Firth  river  (from  an  old  Hud- 
son's Bay  trader  still  in  charge  at  Fort  Macpherson), 
was  named  by  Franklin  the  Mountain  Indian  river,  be- 
cause it  was  by  this  river,  as  the  Eskimos  told  him,  that 
the  Indians  came  down  to  the  coast  from  the  interior  to 
trade.  Franklin  did  not  see  any  of  these  Indians,  though 
his  retreat  to  the  Mackenzie  mouth  was  hastened  by  Es- 
kimo rumours  of  their  approach,  but  the  Eskimos  de- 
scribed them  as  ''tall,  stout  men,  clothed  in  deerskins, 
speaking  a  language  very  dissimilar  to  their  own." 

Now  these  Indians  and  their  intercourse  with  the  Es- 
kimos have  great  interest  for  me  because  they  are,  so  to 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  331 

speak,  my  own  people;  the  Gens  de  large,  or,  as  it  is 
spoken  today,  Chandalars ;  and  I  have  found,  or  think  I  ^ 
have  found,  lingering  traditions  amongst  them  of  this 
very  visit  of  Franklin.  They  are  still,  many  of  them, 
''tail,  stout  men"  notably  superior  in  stature  and 
physique  to  the  Yukon  river  people  and  they  roam  the 
country  north  of  the  Yukon  in  small  bands  following  the 
caribou,  rarely  gathered  in  any  fixed  habitations,  though 
of  late  they  build  log  houses  and  have  two  or  three  small 
villages.  The  most  interesting  and  puzzling  thing  about 
this,  their  earliest  appearance  in  history,  is  that  they 
were  provided  with  iron  implements  and  firearms  which 
did  not  come  from  Hudson's  Bay  posts.  Franklin  ex- 
amined knives,  etc.,  which  the  Eskimos  had  obtained  from 
them,  and  found  them  not  of  English  manufacture  and 
very  different  from  the  articles  brought  into  the  country 
by  the  English.  He  concludes  that  they  came  from  the 
Russian  settlements,  and,  indeed,  there  is  nowhere  else 
that  they  could  have  come  from.  Yet  at  that  time  the 
only  Russian  establishment  north  of  the  Alaska  peninsula 
and  the  Aleutian  Islands  was  at  Nushagak  on  Bristol 
Bay,  and  I  think  a  glance  at  the  map  will  make  it  seem 
much  more  probable  that  these  articles  came  by  barter 
from  the  Siberian  coast  than  that  they  crossed  the  im- 
mense stretches  of  inland  country  from  the  southern  to 
the  northern  shores  of  Alaska. 

Yet  I  am  puzzled  to  trace  the  trade  route  by  which 
such  articles  came  into  the  hands  of  the  Gens  de  large  at 
that  early  date.  Had  the  Indians  received  them  from  the 
Eskimos,  it  would  be  much  more  easily  explicable,  and  I 
am  even  disposed  to  think  that  such  was  the  case:  that 
bands  of  this  or  another  Indian  tribe  visiting  the  coast 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Colville,  or  at  Kotzebue  Sound, 
traded  with  the  western  Eskimos  for  these  European 
manufactures  and  afterwards  traded  them  to  the  Eskimos 
further  to  the  east.  I  think  it  most  probable  that  by  some 
successive  intermediations,  these  goods  came  from  Kotze- 
bue Sound,  by  the  immemorial  trade  route  therefrom. 


332  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

Frequent  opportunities  of  questioning  the  oldest 
Indians  of  the  middle  Yukon  have  satisfied  me  that 
prior  to  the  establishment  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  post 
at  Fort  Yukon,  firearms,  though  not  unknown,  were 
exceedingly  rare,  but  that  iron  implements  such  as  axes 
and  knives  were  already  in  fairly  general  use,  and  that 
they  came  from  two  main  directions,  from  the  east,  in 
trade  with  those  who  procured  them  at  the  Canadian 
posts :  and  from  the  south  in  trade  with  those  who  pro- 
cured them  from  the  Chilkat  Indians  of  the  Pacific  coast 
around  the  Lynn  canal.  They  also  speak  of  goods  that 
came  in  smaller  quantity  from  the  west ;  and  Murray  at 
Fort  Yukon  in  1847  is  burdened  with  the  constant  thought 
of  the  close  presence  of  the  Russians,  though  they  were 
not  within  500  miles  of  him  at  Nulato,  or  within  800  on 
the  southeastern  coast.  ''Guns  and  beads,  beads  and 
guns,  is  all  the  cry  in  our  country,"  he  writes,  and  "the 
Indians  all  prefer  our  guns  to  those  of  the  Russians." 

It  is  amusing  to  note,  in  connection  with  Murray's 
conviction  of  the  proximity  of  the  Russians  to  Fort 
Yukon,  that  Kotzebue  in  1815  is  equally  convinced  of  the 
proximity  of  the  English  to  the  western  coast:  "They 
possess  colonies  in  the  interior  of  the  country  at  a  very 
short  distance  from  the  newly-discovered  sound"  (i.e., 
Kotzebue  Sound),  he  writes  at  a  time  when  the  nearest' 
English  posts  were  on  the  Mackenzie  river.  The  mutual 
commercial  dread  of  these  rival  trading  peoples  is  not 
much  elevated  above  the  mutual  dread  of  Indians  and 
Eskimos;  it  credited  almost  any  native  fable.  Murray 
believed  that  the  Russians  were  bringing  a  cannon  against 
him,  at  a  time  when  the  latter  could  have  no  knowledge  of 
the  existence  of  his  post :  and  Murray  was  an  unusually 
intelligent  trader,  as  his  very  valuable  Journal  of  the 
Yukon  *  proves.  I  wish  that  the  subsequent  diaries  of 
traders  at  this  post,  until  its  abandonment  in  1869,  might 
be  published. 
The  Gens  de  large,  or  Mountain  river  Indians,  or 

*  Publications  of  the  Canadian  Archives  No.  4,  Ottawa,  1910. 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  333 

Cariboo  Indians,  or  Cariboo  Mountain  Indians,  as  they 
are  variously  termed  by  the  early  writers,  still  maintain 
trade  relations  with  the  Eskimos,  but,  instead  of  proceed- 
ing to  the  coast,  nowadays  they  await  the  Eskimos  at  a 
great  lake  in  the  Chandalar  country  at  which  the  trading 
takes  place;  and  polar  bear  and  white  fox  skins  until 
recently  reached  the  Fort  Yukon  traders  by  this  means. 
With  the  Mountain  Indian  river  cutting  through  the 
Buckland  mountains  we  leave  Sir  John  Franklin,  and  I 
am  not  willing  to  leave  him  without  again  expressing  my 
admiration  of  his  character  and  his  achievements.  A 
great  gentleman  as  well  as  a  great  explorer,  he  carried 
his  standards  of  conduct  with,  him  unchanged  wherever 
he  went.  He  left  no  native  mistresses,  no  half-breed 
children  behind  him;  no  smart  of  high-handed  oppres- 
sion, or  resentment  of  trickery  or  fraud.  He  was  just, 
gentle  and  patient;  the  knight  "sans  peur  et  sans  re- 
proche"  of  Arctic  exploration.  Says  John  Eichardson, 
*' Having  served  under  Captain  Franklin  for  nearly  seven 
years  in  two  successive  voyages  of  discovery,  I  trust  I 
may  be  allowed  to  say  that  however  high  his  brother 
officers  may  rate  his  courage  and  talents  either  in  the 
ordinary  line  of  his  professional  duty,  or  in  the  field  of 
discovery,  the  hold  he  acquires  upon  the  affections  of 
those  under  his  command,  by  a  continued  series  of  the 
most  conciliating  attentions  to  their  feelings,  and  uni- 
form and  unremitting  regard  to  their  best  interests,  is 
not  less  conspicuous.  Gratitude  and  attachment  to  our 
late  commanding  officer,  will  animate  our  breasts  to  the 
latest  period  of  our  lives."  There  are  few  in  the  his- 
tory of  exploration  who  have  accomplished  so  much; 
fewer  still,  who  have  accomplished  so  much  so  gently. 
He  measured  no  heads,  I  think,  and  I  am  sure  he  brought 
back  no  boiled  skulls :  he  made  no  contribution  to  a 
knowledge  of  Eskimo  psychology — indeed,  it  was  in  those 
happy,  pre-psychological  days  when,  as  Bret  Harte  says, 
**No  effort  of  will  could  beat  four  of  a  kind;  When  the 
thing  that  you  held  in  your  hand,  pards.  Was  worth  more 


334  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

than  the  thing  in  your  mind."  Maps  were  his  quest  and 
maps  he  brought  back.  Taking  him  all  in  all,  there  have 
been  few  Arctic  explorers  since  worthy  to  unloose  the 
latchet  of  his  shoe,  and  it  is  mere  evidence  of  littleness 
to  seek  to  belittle  him,  as  some  have  done. 

Billy  Bump  and  his  daughter  stopped  early  to  camp, 
but  we  went  on  for  an  hour  or  so  further  and  pitched  our 
tent  amongst  some  willows.  The  next  day  was  a  really 
warm  day.  Parkees  and  mitts  and  sweaters  and  fur 
boots  were  cast  off,  and  we  went  bare-handed  most  of 
the  day.  While  yet  our  tent  was  standing,  the  laborious 
old  man  and  his  daughter  passed  us,  having  made  an 
early  start  that  more  than  compensated  for  their  early 
stop.  The  river  bed  was  now  narrowly  hemmed  in  by 
rocks,  a  sort  of  shattering  shale  which  weathers  down 
upon  the  ice  and  interferes  with  the  passage  of  the  sleds, 
and  about  eleven  in  the  morning  we  saw  our  first  spruce, 
a  dwarf  tree,  little  more  than  a  shrub,  crowning  one  of 
the  points  of  rock,  but  an  unmistakable  spruce;  and 
presently  there  were  more.  It  was  a  joy  to  see  even 
such  stunted  growth,  and  we  hailed  these  most  northerly 
outposts  of  the  vast  spruce  forests  of  the  interior.  When 
we  stopped  to  eat  at  noon  a  camp  robber  (Canada  jay) 
appeared,  and  then  his  mate,  and  our  hearts  were  glad  of 
them  and  we  fed  them  full.  That  noon  stop  will  always 
linger  in  my  memory.  While  we  ate,  and  fed  the  birds,  a 
mass  of  dazzling  white  cloud,  such  as  we  had  not  seen  all 
the  winter,  veritable  summer  cloud,  gathered  itself  in  the 
blue  sky,  and  slowly  divided  and  draped  itself  into  a  most 
graceful  and  almost  perfect  Prince-of-Wales  feathers, 
and  for  awhile  hung  thus  over  the  tree-crowned  rocky 
bluif ;  one  of  the  most  singular  and  beautiful  sights  I 
have  ever  seen  in  the  sky. 

Then  we  saw  crows,  a  hawk,  some  snowbirds,  tracks  of 
ptarmigan,  and  then  pussy  willows!  successive  delight- 
ful indications  that  we  were  returning  to  the  land  of  life 
after  the  blank  sterility  of  the  winter  coast.  By  night 
when  we  had  made  perhaps  twenty-five  miles  on  the  river 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  335 

bed,  sometimes  in  loose  snow  but  more  often  beside  ice 
that  had  sunk  and  collapsed,  with  a  void  below,  as  the 
advance  of  winter  had  staunched  the  flc  y  of  the  stream, 
so  that  there  was  difficulty  in  creeping  aJ  >ng  the  edge  that 
remained,  we  were  amongst  timber,  and  found  plenty  of 
dry  wood  for  the  little  tin  can  stove  with  which  we  had 
provided  ourselves.  The  river  began  to  assume  a  roman- 
tic character,  jagged  rock  rising  in  lofty  bluffs,  dotted 
here  and  there  with  graceful  trees. 

Our  difficulties  with  the  surface  culminated  next  day 
at  the  ''Blow  Hole,"  a  place  of  which  we  had  been  told  on 
the  coast.  All  the  morning  we  were  on  glare  ice,  swept 
and  polished  by  the  wind,  and  growing  more  and  more 
uneven;  heaped  up  into  mounds  the  sides  of  which  gave 
no  footing  to  man  or  beast.  The  Blow  Hole  is  a  wild 
gorge  with  precipitous  rocks  rising  more  than  a  thou- 
sand feet  that  shatter  down  in  a  way  that  is  not  only 
alarming  but  dangerous.  There  is  a  deep  pool  immedi- 
ately below  a  sharp  drop  in  the  river  bed,  and  the  ice, 
smooth  as  glass,  was  all  caved  in  and  smashed  up,  and 
a  really  hazardous  passage  had  to  be  painfully  made 
around  the  narrow,  uneven  edge  and  then  the  sleds 
hoisted  up  the  terraced  ice. 

Here  again  Billy  Bump  and  his  daughter  overtook  us ; 
although  we  travelled  much  faster  than  they,  we  never 
shook  them  off,  and  Walter  said,  ''We've  got  to  hand  it 
to  that  old  chap  for  a  steady  goer."  Had  it  been  a 
straightaway  course  we  should  have  left  them  long  be- 
fore, but  we  were  really  mountain  climbing  at  times  as 
well  as  travelling  and  our  progress  was  slow,  and  while 
the  old  man  and  his  girl  had  five  dogs  to  attend  to  at 
night,  we  had  thirteen. 

We  had  now  traced  the  river  back  through  the  first 
range  of  the  coast  mountains,  the  Buckland  mountains 
of  Franklin.  It  is,  I  think,  no  inconsiderable  tribute 
to  the  professor  of  geology  at  Oxford  that  Beechey  and 
Franklin  should  independently  have  named  natural  fea- 
tures after  him,  the  one,  the  river  that  flows  into  Esch- 


336  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

scholtz  Bay  of  Kotzebue  Sound,  the  other  this  moTintain 
range.  Beechey  was  indeed  indebted  to  him  for  the  de- 
scription of  the  fossil  bones  of  extinct  elephants  which  he 
procured  from  Kotzebue 's  famous  ice-cliffs,  with  plates  of 
which  he  disfigures  his  book.  Anyone  w^ould  have  taken 
his  word  for  his  bones,  and  there  would  have  been  room 
for  the  reproduction  of  more  of  Smythe's  spirited 
sketches;  though  it  must  of  course  be  remembered  that 
at  that  day  evidence  of  the  previous  existence  of  a  non- 
Arctic  fauna  in  the  Arctic  regions  aroused  great  interest 
and  even  excitement  in  the  scientific  world. 

Dr.  William  Buckland  was  a  man  of  varied  attain- 
ments and  of  eminence  along  several  lines.  I  suppose  it 
is  impossible  today  that  a  man  should  be  at  once  Dean 
of  Westminster  and  professor  of  geology  at  Oxford  as 
Buckland  was,  or  Dean  of  Ely  and  professor  of  astron- 
omy at  Cambridge  as  Peacock  was,  but  I  do  not  know 
that  science  is  the  better  off,  now  that  it  has  scarcely  a 
bowing  acquaintance  with  letters.  To  put  knowledge  into 
water-tight  compartments  is  to  make  stagnant  pools  of  it ; 
hence  the  joy  to  cultivated  minds  of  a  man  like  Henri 
Fabre,  who  lets  his  letters  ripple  into  his  science,  mak- 
ing it  sweet  and  palatable  thereby,  so  that  all  at  once 
entomology  becomes  surprisingly  attractive: — which  is 
a  very  different  thing  from  desperate  but  ever  futile  at- 
tempts at  the  "popularization"  of  science. 

Having  passed  the  first  mountain  range  we  found  the 
river  spreading  itself  out  into  more  of  a  valley,  with 
banks  instead  of  precipitous  bluffs,  as  it  issued  from  the 
greater  elevations  of  the  main  range.  The  glare  ice  pres- 
ently gave  place  to  hard  snow  and  that  to  soft  snow,  and 
before  the  day  was  done  I  was  on  snowshoes  for  the 
first  time  in  the  whole  winter  journey  save,  I  think,  one 
day  on  the  Koyukuk.  Our  three  pairs  of  snowshoes, 
lashed  on  the  top  of  the  sled,  had  several  times  aroused 
amusement  on  the  coast,  but  we  should  never  have  got 
home  at  all  without  them.  Indeed  it  is  my  rule  never  to 
make  any  winter  journey,  however  short,  without  them. 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  337 

One  day  spent  wallowing  tlirough  deep,  new  snow  involves 
greater  labour  than  carrying  snowshoes  for  the  whole 
winter.  Of  all  ''extra-eorporaneous  limbs"  as  Samuel 
Butler  calls  them,  the  snowshoe  is  the  most  indispensable 
in  the  Arctic. 

I  look  back  upon  the  few  days  when  we  were  ascending 
the  Herschel  Island  river  with  an  especial  pleasure, 
partly  no  doubt  from  the  contrast  their  ease  and  com- 
fort afford  in  the  retrospect  to  the  fatigues  that  were  yet 
to  come;  partly  from  the  contrast  which  their  scenery- 
afforded  to  the  flatness  and  emptiness  of  the  great 
Arctic  littoral  along  the  edge  of  which  we  had  passed. 
Not  without  a  certain  sober  dignity  of  their  own,  not 
without  a  certain  appealing  mystery  of  expanse  and  in- 
definiteness,  there  was  nevertheless  a  sameness,  a  tedium, 
about  these  coastal  plains,  that  engendered  a  straining 
longing  of  the  eye  for  some  break,  some  arresting  feature, 
some  variety.  The  Herschel  Island  river  is  a  picturesque 
mountain  stream.  Every  bend  brought  a  new  combina- 
tion of  rocks  and  trees,  some  fresh  shapes  of  pinnacles, 
with  bristling  spruce  springing  from  crannies  and  ledges. 
I  suppose  that  to  the  accustomed  eye  the  middle  of  April 
would  disclose  some  sign  of  approaching  spring  on  the 
Arctic  coast,  but  to  us  it  showed  a  still  dominant  winter 
that,  save  for  the  promise  of  the  climbing  sun,  might  be 
perpetually  dominant.  The  river  already  teemed  with 
signs  of  reviving  nature. 

The  chief  pleasure  which  those  days  on  the  little  Arctic 
river  held  for  me,  however,  was  the  renewed,  unrestricted 
intercourse  with  my  companion.  We  had  never  been 
alone  together  since  we  left  Point  Barrow,  and  things 
had  happened  in  Walter's  mind  since  then.  It  was  not 
merely  that  we  resumed  our  readings  with  fresh  ardour, 
it  was  that  an  affectionate  intimacy  of  many  years'  stand- 
ing was  deepened  by  confidences  touching  very  closely 
personal  feelings  and  desires.  He  began  by  giving  me 
his  little  diary  to  read,  and  I  went  through  it  from  the 
first  to  the  last.    It  gratified  me  to  find  that  it  was  well 


338  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

written  even  in  the  unavoidable  haste  of  its  writing; 
that  it  was  free  from  grammatical  errors ;  that  it  had  a 
simple  directness  and  even  at  times  vigour  of  expres- 
sion. English  was  not  his  mother  tongue;  at  sixteen 
years  of  age  he  knew  very  little  of  it;  but  he  had  long 
since  mastered  its  syntax  and  had  a  sufficient  vocabulary. 
Indeed,  when  I  had  sent  him  out  to  school  and  the  com- 
plaint was  made  that  he  knew  no  grammar  I  was  able 
to  ask  with  confidence  if  what  he  spoke  and  wrote  were 
not  entirely  grammatical  ?  That  he  could  not  recite  rules 
mattered  very  little,  as  I  look  at  it,  if  he  never  broke 
them.  Laws  are  for  law-breakers :  rules  of  grammar  are 
for  the  ungrammatical ;  Walter  learned  the  language 
grammatically  from  one  who  continually  watched  his 
lips;  and  he  never  had  faults  in  English  to  correct;  al- 
though he  had  come  back  to  me  sufficiently  provided 
with  current  slang. 

I  wish  I  had  that  diary  now,  but  I  know  that  she  of 
whom  it  had  much  to  say  treasured  it,  and  doubtless  had 
it  with  her  on  that  fatal  day  some  eight  months  later.  I 
had  known  that  there  was  sentiment  between  them  since 
she  had  nursed  him  through  his  fever,  but  not  that  there 
was  an  engagement  for  marriage.  This,  and  the  resolve 
to  offer  himself  for  the  war,  were  the  two  chief  confi- 
dences which  he  gave  me.  Both  of  them  broke  sadly  into 
my  plans  and  ambitions  for  him,  but  he  assured  me 
that  if  he  came  safely  through  the  war  he  would  immedi- 
ately resume  his  preparation  for  medicine,  and  I  know 
that  they  did  not  then  contemplate  an  early  marriage. 
So  I  swallowed  my  disappointment  and  accepted  the  situ- 
ation. Indeed,  so  far  as  the  enlistment  was  concerned, 
I  was  proud  that  without  any  urging  he  saw  it  as  his 
duty,  and  as  soon  as  he  saw  it,  resolved  upon  it.  I  was 
proud,  too,  that  he  had  won  the  heart  of  a  cultivated 
gentlewoman.  The  summer's  cruise  of  visitation  to  the 
Yukon  missions  ended,  he  would  go  outside  to  enter  what- 
ever branch  of  the  army  would  receive  him: — the  avia- 
tion corps  by  preference.    Walter  had  long  ago  become 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  339 

almost  a  son  to  me,  and  regarded  me  almost  as  a  father — 
the  only  father  he  had  ever  known — and  I  think  the  rela- 
tion was  established  as  closely  as  it  can  exist  without  the 
actual  cement  of  blood,  upon  this  stage  of  our  journey. 

The  next  day  I  was  ahead  of  the  dogs  breaking  trail 
all  the  morning,  and  by  noon  we  were  at  the  tent  of  an 
Eskimo  trapper  come  down  a  day's  journey  from  his 
cabin  above,  to  look  at  his  traps.  We  stayed  and  ate, 
and  while  eating  were  again  overtaken  by  that  indefati- 
gable Billy  Bump  and  his  daughter.  This  new  Eskimo 
man,  Titus,  gave  us  to  understand  that  he  could  take 
us,  in  two  days  from  his  house,  over  the  mountains  to  a 
tributary  of  the  Colleen  or  Sucker  river,  and  we  started 
with  him  up  to  his  place,  hoping  to  reach  it  that  night; 
counting  ourselves  fortunate  to  have  fallen  in  with  him. 
Three  or  four  hours'  more  travel  brought  us  to  a  long, 
narrow  lake,  in  process  of  overflow,  the  water  invading 
the  snow  and  covering  the  ice  everywhere.  The  dogs 
needed  some  urging  to  take  to  it  at  first,  but  after  a  little 
we  went  along  mile  after  mile  at  a  good  clip,  for  nearly 
ten  miles,  until  we  were  almost  at  the  home  camp  of 
Billy  Bump.  Here,  in  deep,  saturated  snow,  the  teams 
stalled.  Walter,  ahead,  seated  on  his  sled — for  we  had 
neither  of  us  taken  the  precaution  to  stop  and  put  on  our 
waterboots — was  able  with  the  leverage  of  the  tent  pole 
to  get  his  team  started  again  and  to  reach  the  bank,  but 
having  no  such  implement  to  my  hand  I  had  to  get  off  the 
sled  and  push,  and  my  feet  were  immediately  wetted. 
Billy  Bump's  wife  was  kind  in  removing  my  wet  gear 
and  preparing  my  long-unused  water  boots,  and  we  pres- 
ently proceeded  for  another  hour  to  Titus's  cabin,  hav- 
ing been  twelve  hours  on  the  trail  that  day. 

Here,  at  Oo-na-ke-vik,  we  lay  over  Sunday,  glad  of 
the  rest,  and  much  interested  in  our  situation  and  in  our 
company.  Titus's  home  was  a  large  house  of  split  logs 
built  around  growing  trees  which  supported  the  roof, 
the  walls  inclining  towards  the  centre.  We  were  almost 
on  the  international  boundary,  the  line  passing  through 


340  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

the  lakes  we  crossed  the  day  before,  and  were  near  ine 
headwaters  and  divide  of  the  Yukon  and  Arctic  Ocean 
streams,  at  an  elevation  of  something  between  1,000  and 
1,500  feet,  as  I  judged  it.  Standing  outside  the  house, 
Titus  pointed  out  to  us  the  heads  of  the  Old  Crow  and 
Colleen  rivers,  or  rather,  the  mountains  on  the  other 
side  of  which  these  streams  arise,  and  far  to  the  west 
showed  us  another  mountain  from  which  rises  a  branch 
of  the  Skeenjik  or  Salmon,  a  tributary  of  the  Porcupine 
which  joins  that  stream  within  fifty  miles  of  Fort  Yukon. 
We  felt  that  we  were  almost  home  again ;  a  little  prema- 
turely. 

The  people  were  full  of  interest  to  me  also.  Here,  as 
I  discovered  with  delight,  were  some  of  the  Eskimos 
wont  to  visit  the  Big  Lake  (Vun  Gi-it-ti)  and  trade  with 
Christian's  people  (Christian  is  chief  of  the  Chandalars) 
and  here  were  actually  some  who  had  been  baptized  by 
our  Fort  Yukon  native  clergyman,  William  Loola,  upon 
one  of  his  visits  to  this  rendezvous.  I  had  no  interpreter 
and  could  not  even  attempt  instruction,  so  Walter  and 
I  said  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer  in  English,  and  we 
all  joined  in  some  Eskimo  hymns  out  of  a  Herschel  Island 
book  we  found  here.  Although  Titus  had  never  received 
instruction  at  a  mission,  he  had  learned  from  others  the 
rudiments  of  reading  his  own  tongue,  and  seemed  fa- 
miliar with  the  chief  teachings  of  Christianity. 

After  much  bargaining  we  succeeded  in  securing  the 
services  of  Titus  as  guide  for  the  next  two  days,  and 
after  still  more  in  purchasing  from  an  old  woman,  the 
mother  of  his  wife,  a  small  supply  of  meat  for  dog-feed. 
Then  it  appeared  that  the  old  man,  her  husband,  also 
had  a  little  that  he  would  sell,  but  wanted  tobacco  in 
exchange,  and  when  we  were  agreed  as  to  quantity,  was 
not  satisfied  with  the  quality,  but  wanted  the  can  of 
special  Hudson's  Bay  mixture  which  I  had  bought  for 
my  own  smoking.  So  it  was  a  long  time  before  we  got 
away  on  Monday  morning,  the  15th  April,  once  more 
three  sleds  and  three  teams  in  our  party. 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  341 

Our  way  lay  along  the  length  of  another  lake,  and  then 
across  wide  flats,  still  following  the  Herschel  Island  river. 
An  old  trail  of  the  early  -winter  was  very  hard  to  tind, 
but  worth  finding,  for  it  had  bottom.  At  times  we  were 
at  fault,  off  the  trail  in  deep  snow,  and  then  the  progress 
was  laborious,  with  many  upsets.  The  day  was  warm, 
and  in  the  afternoon  even  sultry,  the  sky  overcast;  and 
our  advance  was  slow. 

At  length  we  drew  near  to  a  cleft  or  saddle  in  the 
mountains,  which  would  lead  us,  Titus  said,  out  of  Her- 
schel Island  river  water  into  Colleen  river  water.  We 
made  our  toilsome  way  towards  it,  and  camped  close  to 
it,  amongst  the  last  willows,  not  quite  within  the  jaws  of 
the  pass. 

In  three  hours  the  next  morning  we  had  wound  our  way 
up  the  gradual  steep  ascent  to  the  summit  of  the  pass,  an 
easy  pass  compared  to  many  among  the  mountains  of  the 
interior,  but  disappointing  to  us  who  had  looked  for- 
ward to  the  view  it  would  afford,  since  rapidly  gathering 
clouds  denied  any;  and  after  a  short  rest  we  plunged 
into  the  helter-skelter  slide  of  the  descent  on  the  other 
side,  thankful  to  be  in  Yukon  waters  once  more,  but  dis- 
mayed already  at  the  depth  of  loose  snow  we  found.  "VVe 
were  no  sooner  at  the  bottom  than  the  clouds  that  had 
been  gathering  discharged  themselves  in  a  great  addi- 
tion thereto;  thick,  heavy,  wet  snow,  that  saturated  our 
parkees  and  sled-covers  as  it  fell. 

Here  Titus  demanded  to  return,  and  although  we  were 
entitled  to  another  half  day  of  his  services,  yet  since  we 
were  without  doubt  in  Yukon  water  and  had  but  to  pursue 
the  creek  bed  to  reach  the  Colleen,  I  consented  and  paid 
him  the  agreed  price  and  he  left.  In  a  couple  of  hours 
more,  following  the  windings  of  the  divide,  we  reached 
another  camp,  where  an  Eskimo  named  Charley,  whom 
I  had  seen  a  year  before  at  the  Rampart  House,  was  liv- 
ing, with  his  family  and  an  aged  couple,  and  a  young  man. 
Charley  was  most  cordial,  and  I  had  been  there  but  a  few 
minutes  when  he  asked  me  to  marry  the  young  man  to 


342  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

his  eldest  daughter.  Now  here  was  another  instance  of 
the  folly  of  an  all-inclusive  marriage  law  that  takes  no 
account  of  the  situation  of  many  of  the  Alaskan  natives. 
The  nearest  United  States  commissioner  was  at  Fort 
Yukon,  250  miles  away,  and  it  is  certain  that  if  this 
young  man  made  the  journey  thither  so  late  in  the  sea- 
son he  could  not  return  until  the  summer,  and  doubtful  if 
he  could  return  then ;  for  we  were  not  on  navigable  water, 
and  only  with  the  utmost  difficulty  could  this  place  be 
reached  from  the  Yukon  in  the  summer.  But  I  need  not 
labour  the  point ;  it  must  be  evident  that  those  who  made 
this  law  either  did  not  intend  it  to  apply  to  the  natives, 
or  else  forgot  all  about  the  natives  when  they  made  it. 
There  was  only  one  thing  for  me  to  do ;  and  I  laid  myself 
liable  to  another  year  in  goal  and  another  fine  of  $500 
in  doing  it.  They  were  already  married  by  the  native 
custom  which  consists  simply  in  the  father  and  mother 
giving  the  girl  to  the  boy,  and  already  cohabiting.  No 
Christian  minister  of  any  sort  would,  I  think,  have  passed 
by  and  refused  the  sanction  of  the  Church  to  the  union ; 
certainly  not  one  who  had  long  laboured  to  implant  the 
institution  of  Christian  marriage  and  foster  respect  for  it. 

Joseph  was  about  seventeen  and  the  girl  about  sixteen 
years  old.  I  know  that  there  is  strong  feeling  in  some 
quarters  against  such  early  marriages.  When  I  came 
to  the  country  I  shared  it ;  now  I  do  not ;  now  I  am  in  gen- 
eral in  favour  of  the  early  marriage  of  the  natives,  and 
not  at  all  sure  that  it  would  be  an  ill  thing  to  return  in 
civilized  life  to  a  custom  more  nearly  satisfying  natural 
demands.  My  experience  amongst  the  Indians  is  that 
these  early  marriages  are  commonly  happiest,  and  I  know 
that  the  alternative  is  a  period  of  adolescent  promiscuity, 
wherein  all  the  physiological  disadvantages  of  early  mar- 
riage are  involved,  with  the  addition  of  the  moral  deg- 
radation of  clandestine  indulgence. 

Joseph  had  a  little  rough,  beach-combers '  English,  and 
he  presently  dug  amongst  his  belongings  and  produced  a 
tin  box,  from  which  he  took  a  couple  of  dollars  and 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  343 

offered  them  to  me,  saying:  ''You  marry  me;  me  pay 
you."  But  I  bade  the  boy  put  up  his  money,  which  he 
was  nothing  loath  to  do,  and  told  him  that  if  he  liked  he 
might  help  us  down  the  creek  for  the  rest  of  the  day,  to 
which  he  was  quite  willing. 

Then  Charley,  who  had  slow,  hesitating,  but  careful 
English  that  showed  a  little  mission  instruction,  asked 
of  me  that  I  baptize  the  old  couple.  That,  however,  was 
a  more  difficult  thing,  for  I  must  be  satisfied  that  the  old 
people  knew  what  was  doing  and  had  at  least  rudimen- 
tary instruction.  The  trouble  with  these  Caribou  Es- 
kimos is  that  they  are  unable,  except  in  rare  instances, 
to  make  more  than  hurried  visits  to  a  mission  station; 
their  livelihood  depends  on  following  the  game;  and  if 
I  refused  to  baptize  this  aged  couple  they  might  die 
before  another  opportunity  occurred.  So  I  sent  off  Wal- 
ter and  Joseph  to  break  out  the  trail  and  sat  down  with 
Charley's  aid  to  find  out  what  the  old  folks  knew  and 
whether  I  could  instruct  them  sufficiently  to  justify  my 
anxious  desire  to  comply  with  their  anxious  desire.  Over 
and  over  again  I  reiterated  the  statement  of  the  funda- 
mentals of  the  Christian  religion,  and  at  last,  never 
doubting  that  the  Di\"ine  mercy  would  accept  their  simple 
faith  and  overlook  their  ignorance,  I  took  water  and  bap- 
tized them,  by  name  Ky-now-rok  and  Kup-riin-na,  adding 
the  Christian  names  James  and  Mary. 

Joseph  had  supper  with  us  that  night  and  returned 
to  his  bride,  and  Joseph  was  the  last  human  being  we  saw 
for  a  week.  For  there  began  the  next  day  the  hardest 
labour  of  the  whole  journey,  the  descent  of  the  Colleen 
river  in  the  deep,  soft,  unbroken  snow  of  all  the  winter. 
We  recalled  the  disparaging  remarks  about  the  interior 
made  by  a  Herschel  Island  native,  "No  seals,  no  whales, 
all  deep  snow."  We  had  suffered  exposure  to  every 
stress  of  fierce  weather  on  the  coast,  but  there  had  been 
nothing  comparable  to  the  exhausting  labour  and  fatigue 
of  this  river,  for  we  had  always  a  hard  surface  to  travel 
upon.    Now  the  weather  was  mild  and  warm  enough,  too 


344  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

warm  most  of  the  time,  but  from  morning  to  niglit  was 
one  ceaseless,  laborious  grind.  I  wont  ahead  on  snow- 
shoes  and  broke  out  the  trail,  back  and  forth,  two  or  three 
times;  Walter,  with  the  little  sled  trailed  behind  the  big 
sled  and  all  the  dogs  in  one  team,  strained  at  the  gee-pole 
with  a  rope  around  his  shoulders. 

Lifting  two  or  three  pounds  of  moist  snow  at  each  step 
all  day  long  is  most  exhausting  work,  and  my  shoulder 
began  to  trouble  me  that  had  scarce  made  itself  remem- 
bered since  that  hard  day  on  the  Koyukuk  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  journey.  Towards  evening,  day  after  day, 
the  sharp,  lancinating  pains  would  strike  across  the  back 
of  my  neck,  followed  by  a  dull  ache  that  kept  me  from 
sleep  at  night,  and  I  wished  with  all  my  heart  that  I  had 
engaged  Joseph  or  Charley  to  accompany  us.  Walter 
had  much  the  harder  of  the  two  jobs,  however,  swinging 
that  heavy  sled  continually  and  adding  his  tractive  power 
to  that  of  the  dogs.  It  was  under  just  such  circumstances 
that  Walter  shone ;  circumstances  that  would  have  made 
Mark  Tapley  ''come  out  strong."  He  was  never  irri- 
table or  impatient,  always  cheerful  though  with  not  much 
to  say.  Stress  of  any  kind  added  to  his  customary  taci- 
turnity. We  were  too  utterly  weary  at  night  for  any 
study  and  our  book  work  lapsed.  Walter  would  fall 
asleep  the  moment  he  had  eaten  his  supper,  and  I  would 
go  and  dish  out  the  dog-feed  he  had  cooked. 

The  poor  beasts  suffered  also.  On  the  5th  April  I  was 
sorry  for  them  that  they  had  to  struggle  against  a  wind 
at  40°  below  zero;  on  the  25th  April  I  was  sympathizing 
wdth  their  panting  protests  at  a  temperature  of  40°  above. 
We  could  throw  off  our  parkees  and  mitts,  fur  caps  and 
scarves ;  they  had  still  to  wear  their  heavy  winter  coats. 
The  blubber  cooked  with  oatmeal  was  still  more  unsuit- 
able than  had  been  the  food  cooked  along  the  coast,  and 
as  it  grew  warmer  they  refused  it  or  ate  very  sparingly, 
and  often  after  they  had  eaten  their  stomachs  rejected  it 
again.  So  w^ith  the  incessant  toil  and  insufficient  food 
they  grew  gaunt.    One,  who  had  fallen  lame,  was  cut  out 


JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  345 

and  limped  along  behind.  One  night  we  missed  him  and 
he  did  not  turn  up  at  all,  and  we  were  both  too  tired 
to  go  back  and  look  for  him,  and  saw  him  no  more.  I 
think  that  when  he  was  rested  he  probably  made  his  way 
back  to  the  Eskimo  encampment.  That  is  the  first  dog 
I  have  ever  "lost"  on  the  trail. 

It  would  be  mere  tediousness  to  record  that  river 
journey  day  by  day.  Again  and  again  we  wished  w^e  had 
taken  the  longer  route  by  the  Eampart  House,  on  which 
we  should  at  least  have  had  a  trail.  Sometimes  we  had 
stretches  of  miles  of  ''overflow"  water,  and  we  went 
through  it  with  great  relief  and  ease,  only  to  resume  our 
ploughing  through  the  snow  when  it  was  done;  some- 
times we  had  to  drag  our  sleds  over  blown  sandbars 
where  scarcely  enough  snow  was  left  for  passage ;  some- 
times we  had  a  little  glare  overflow  ice,  and  that  was 
quickly  overpassed;  but  in  the  main  our  way  lay  through 
deep  soft  snow.  One  habitation  only  we  passed  in  that 
week,  a  white  trapper's,  but  it  was  unoccupied  and  care- 
fully padlocked,  with  what  seemed  superfluous  precau- 
tion. 

On  the  23rd,  when  we  thought  we  were  surely  approach- 
ing the  mouth  of  the  river,  but  were  yet  in  reality  forty 
miles  therefrom,  an  hour  after  we  had  started  in  the 
morning  we  came  to  a  cabin  sitting  some  distance  back 
from  the  right  bank,  and  heard  dogs !  How  that  sound 
delighted  us !  So  many  times  in  these  Alaskan  years  has 
that  sound  brought  grateful  news  of  the  proximity  of 
mankind,  of  shelter  and  warmth  and  guidance,  that  I 
think  I  shall  never  hear  distant  dogs  as  long  as  I  live 
without  my  heart  leaping  up.  It  proved  to  be  an  Indian 
named  Gabriel,  and  never  was  the  archangel  himself 
more  welcome.  He  had  come  across  a  portage  from  the 
Porcupine  to  gather  up  his  traps  and  was  returning  by 
the  same  way  that  day.  He  told  us  that  in  tliirty  miles 
the  portage  would  take  us  to  John  Herbert's  place  on  the 
Porcupine  river  below  the  lower  ramparts,  and  also 
that  the  ice  on  the  Colleen  near  its  mouth  was  so  badly 


346  A  WINTER  CIRCUIT 

broken  up,  with  so  much  open  water,  that  he  doubted  if 
we  could  have  passed  over  it.  I  knew  of  this  portage, 
but  not  of  its  location,  and  it  has  so  little  mark  that  but 
for  this  Indian  track  I  think  we  should  surely  have 
passed  it  unnoticed ;  indeed  I  had  supposed  that  we  had 
already  passed  it. 

It  must  have  been  at  this  cabin  that  Captain  Amundsen, 
on  his  journey  from  Herschel  Island  to  a  telegraph  sta- 
tion on  the  Yukon  in  1906  to  let  the  world  know  that  he 
had  accomplished  the  Northwest  Passage,  saw  his  first 
Indians;  and  I  recall  his  naive  excitement — he  that  had 
been  amongst  Eskimos  for  two  years — at  the  approach- 
ing realization  of  his  boyhood's  dreams.  He  expected  to 
see  copper-coloured  fellows  with  feathers  in  their  hair 
and  tomahawks  in  their  hands,  and  was  much  disap- 
pointed when  people  in  ordinary  clothes  came  out  speak- 
ing English.  He  complains  that  they  might  have  been 
common  Norwegian  peasants.  I  have  always  been  sorry 
that  I  missed  Captain  Amundsen  at  Circle,  by  two  or 
three  hours,  when  he  was  making  this  land  journey.  We 
had  followed  his  route  exactly  from  Herschel  Island, 
and  he  also  was  fortunate  enough  to  find  direction  for 
the  portage  here. 

The  portage  was  rough  and  narrow,  the  weather  very 
warm  and  the  snow  soft  and  mushy.  When  we  had  strug- 
gled along  till  noon  we  decided  to  camp  and  endeavour  to 
cover  the  rest  of  it  at  night — so  we  tried  as  best  we  could 
to  sleep  in  the  sunshine.  By  five  o  'clock  we  were  moving 
again,  and  a  long  journey  of  thirteen  hours — the  dogs 
doing  much  better  than  in  the  daytime — brought  us  out 
not  only  to  John  Herbert's  place  but  to  the  combined 
parties  of  Mr.  Stefansson  and  Dr.  Burke,  who  had  met 
at  the  Rampart  House  and  were  thus  far  on  their  way  to 
Fort  Yukon. 

It  was  a  very  happy  reunion  for  Dr.  Burke  and  myself, 
and  I  was  greatly  pleased  to  meet  Mr.  Stefansson  and  to 
find  him  so  much  improved.  The  folks  at  Herschel  Island 
doubted  if  he  would  reach  Fort  Yukon  alive,  but  I  was  not 


N 

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Ay 

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JOURNEY  TO  FORT  YUKON  347 

surprised  to  find  him  mended.  I  think  that  had  he  stayed 
in  the  little  cabin  where  he  lay  so  long  sick,  with  several 
zealous  amateur  practitioners  doing  their  rival  best  for 
him,  he  would  very  likely  have  died.  I  brought  from 
Demarcation  Point  to  Herschel  Island  for  him  the  bulki- 
est Booh  of  Household  Medicine  I  ever  saw,  and  I  think 
that  by  the  time  its  contents  and  its  remedies  had  been 
digested  there  would  have  been  little  left  to  do  for  the 
patient  but  bury  him.  Many  a  time  have  I  known  a  long 
sled  journey  do,  not  merely  no  harm,  but  amazing  good 
to  desperately  sick  people,  and  that  not  only  in  pul- 
monary affections  but  in  intestinal  complaints  and  pro- 
foundly septic  conditions,  and  I  have  never  yet  known 
any  harm  to  result,  even  when  taken  in  the  most  severe 
weather.  There  is  a  wonderful  tonic,  germicidal  power 
in  the  Arctic  air.  Moreover  Dr.  Burke  had  at  once  set 
aside  all  the  rigid  restrictions  that  had  been  placed  upon 
his  diet  and  had  fed  him  full. 

Three  days  of  soft  mushy  weather — almost  as  bad  at 
night  as  in  the  day — brought  us  down  the  Porcupine  river 
to  Fort  Yukon.  We  reached  that  place  in  the  evening  of 
the  27th  April,  and,  word  of  our  approach  having  gone 
ahead  from  our  last  stop,  we  had  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  a 
village  most  gratifyingly  rejoiced  at  our  safe  return. 

So,  three  days  before  the  limit  of  time  that  I  had  set 
when  we  started,  ended  this  winter  journey  of  six  months 
lacking  ten  days;  and,  a  year  later  to  a  day,  ends  the 
writing  of  this  narrative  of  it. 


FINIS 


INDEX 


Abruzzi,  Duke  of  the,  180 
Aeroplane,    will    it    supersede    dogs 

and  sleds?  306 
Ah-ka-lu-rak  Kiver,  156,  158,  164 
Ah-ten-ow-rah    (Eskimo  chief),   129 
Alaska  and  Its  Resources,  Dall,  298 
Alaskan  constabulary,  need  for,  294 
Alatna  River,   11,  39,  48 
Aleutian  Islands,  101,  331 
Alexander  Archipelago,   55,   101 
Alexander  of  Tolovana,  22 
Allakaket,  the  mission: 
arrival  at,  34 
departure  from,  39 
also  8,  11,  27,  75 
Allen,   Jim    (veteran   whaler),   91, 

145 
Allen,  Lieut.,   53,  54 
A-mahk-too-sook     (last)    Mountain, 

177 
Ambler  River,  54 

Amundsen,    Capt.     (first    to    make 

complete     Northern     Passage), 

243 

also  176,  243,  320,  325,  346 

Andy    (Eskimo   mail    carrier),    178 

Anglo-American    Polar    Expedition, 

291 
Anxiety  Point,  283,  295 
Architecture    (only  type  for  Arctic 
regions),  110  et  seq.,  222  et  seq. 
Arctic  coast: 

aeroplane,  will  it  supersede  sled? 

306 
beauty  of  Arctic  nights,  144,  187 
charts   inaccurate,   91,   274,    280, 

281 
clothing  suitable  for,  89 
first  missions  on  coast,   105 
germicidal  property  of  air,  347 
health   of   natives   neglected,   218 

et  seq. 
hospitality,  283 

is  it  unfit  for  occupation?  251 
lagoons  characteristic  feature  of, 

97,  181 
mapped  by  Leffingwell,  292 
non-Arctic  fauna,  336 
paleocrystic  ice,  244 
power  of  the  wind,  106,  107,  173 
et  seq. 


Arctic  coast  (cant.)  : 

scenery  monotonous,  257 
sledding  until  June,  327 
threshold  of  the  unknown,  244 
weather  dominates  travel,  193 
Arctic  Ocean,  arrival  at,  478 
Arey,  Ned  (trapper),  301,  309 
Argo   (dean  of  dogs),  150,  151 
Ar-ki-li-nik  (in  Greenland  legends), 

132 
Aurora  Borealis: 
at  Coldfoot,  27 
at  Point  Lay,  187 
auroral  photography,  57  et  seq. 
is  there  resultant  soimd?  60 
notable  vivacity  of,  41 
Athlanuk  (Eskimo  lad),  47,  48,  50, 

52,  65 
Augustus    (Eskimo   interpreter   for 
Sir  John  Franklin),  283 


B 


Babbage,  Charles,  319 
Babbage  River,  319 
Back,  Sir  George,  267 
Baffin's  Bay,  88,  306 
Bailie    Islands,    327 
Baker,  Marcus,  Geographic  Diction- 
ary of  Alaska,  300 
Baldy   of   Notne    (book   about  dog- 
racing),  148 
Banks    Land,    233,    244,    253,    291, 

295,  309 
Baptism  of  aged  couple,  343 
Barge  of  the  Blossom,  87,  88,  204, 

241,  242 
Barren  Lands,  the,  325 
Barrow,    Sir   John,    "  father    of   all 
modern  Arctic  enterprise,"  242 
Barrow    (post  office),   204 

see  Point  Barrow 
Barter  Island: 

arrival  at,  304 

base  camp  of  StefAnsson,  295 

departure  from,  307 

also  309,  314,  329 
Barter   River,  311 
Bartlett,  Last  Voyage  of  the  Ear- 
hik,  225 

also  314 
Bathurst  Cape,  327 
Bathurst  Inlet,  276 


349 


350 


INDEX 


Bathurst  Island,  201 
Bays: 

BaflSn's,  83,  306 
Beaufort,  308,  309 
Bristol,  331 
Camden,  301 
Disenchantment,  241 
Elson,  243,  263 
Escholtz,  335 
Goodhope,  241 
Gwydyr,    281,    297 
Harrison,  177,  272,  274,  275 
Prudhoe,  283,  297 
St.  Lawrence,  53 
Smith,  268 
Beadwork,  Indian,  44  et  seq. 
Bear,  the   (revenue  cutter),  94 
Beaufort,     Admiral      Sir     Francis, 
hydrographer  British  Admiral- 
ty, 174,  308 
Beaufort  Bay,  308,  309 
Beaufort   Cape,   174,  221 
Beaufort  scale,  174 
Beaufort  Sea,  244,  308 
Beechey,  Capt.  of  Blossom: 

arrives  at  Point  Hope,  104,  105, 

248 
as  a  missionary,  186 
discovers  coal  at  Cape  Beaufort, 

165,   166 
narrative  a  model,  76,  205 
place-names  given  by,  75,  87,  190, 

242 
also  46,  53,  91,  94,  95,  155,   167, 
174,  235,  247 
Beechey  and  Franklin  determine  the 

N.  VV.  limits,  282 
Beechey  Point: 
arrival  at,  280 
farthest    point    reached    by    Sir 

John  Franklin,  280 
also  272,  275,  277,  281 
Belcher  Point,  201 
Belcher,  Sir  Edward,  87,  88 

Last  of  the  Arctic  Voyages,  88 
Berens  Point,  280,  281 
Bering's  Sea,  32 
Bering  Sea  route,  306 
Bering  Straits: 

passage  on  foot,  108 
route  to  North  Pole,  306 
also  103,  138 
Bering,  Vitus,  101 
Berry,   304,   305 
Bettles,  16,  27  et  seq. 
Big   Lake,    149,    340 
Billy,    Eskimo    chevalier    of    indus- 
try, 269  et  seq. 
Bishop  of  Alaska    (Rt.  Rev.  P.  T. 
Rowe,    D.D.),     128,     136,    303, 
313 


Bishop    of    Yukon    Territory     (Rt. 
Rev.  I.  0.  Stringer,  D.D.),  213, 

313 
"  Black  Jack  "  's  Place,  39 
"Blond"  Eskimos,  102 
Bloody  Falls,  61,   199 
Blossom,  Cape,  85 
Blossom,  the,  186,  190,  241,  242,  281 
"Blow  Hole"  (Firth  River),  335 
Bob  (guide),  200  et  seq. 
Books  of  Arctic  exploration,  86 
Boothia  Felix,  209,  245 
Boulder  Creek,  25 
Boundary    between    American    and 

British  territory  reached,  313 
Bristol  Bay,  246,  331 
British  Admiralty,  excellent  charts, 

325 
British  Hydrographers,  95 
British  Hydrographical  OflBce,  94 
British  Museum,  274 
Brower,  Charles: 

mine  of  information,  213,  235 
also  205,  210  et  seq.,  225  et  seq., 

249,  250,  269  et  seq.,  310,  330 
Brown,  Belmore,  284 
Bryce,  George,  RemarkaMe  History 

of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company, 

273 
Buckland,    Dr.    William,   Dean   and 

scientist,  336 
Buckland  Mountains,  333,  335,   336 
Buckland  River,  335 
Bump,  Billy  (guide),  329,  334,  335, 

339 
Bureau   of    Education,    65,    68,    70, 

105,  132,  197 
Bureau  of  Geographical  Names,  299 
Burke,  Dr.  Grafton: 

goes  to   the  relief  of  Stefansson,' 

321 
met  on  the  trail,  346,  347 
also  preface,  4,  6 


Camden  Bay,  301 

Canada  jays,  334 

Candle,  65.  136 

Canning  River,  296,  297,  311 

Capes:    (and  Points) 

Anxiety,  283,  295 

Beaufort,  174,  221 

Beechey,  280 

Belcher,  201 

Berens,  280,  281 

Blossom,  85 

Chelyuskin,  244 

Collie,   194 

Collinson,  300 


INDEX 


351 


Capes:    (and  Points)    {cont.)  : 

Deception,   241 

Demarcation,   308,   310,   312,   347 

East,  305 

Elizabeth,  241 

Ellice,  272 

Franklin,  281 

Griffin,  308 

Halkett,  268,  272,  274,  302 

Heald    (Herald),  298 

Hiunphreys,  308 

Icy,  124,  125,  134,  189,  190,  283 

Krusenstern,  85 

Lay,  186,  188 

Lisburne,  106,  130,  156,  221,  292, 
305 

Manning,  299,  308 

Marsh,   194 

Murchison  Promontory,  209 

Oliktok,  280 

Prince  Alfred,  309 

Prince  of  Wales,  105,  109,  236,  243 

Sabine,   108,   167,   168 

Shingle,  324 

Simpson,  267 

Sir  Henry  Martin,  308 

Smythe,  204,  209 

Tangent,   264 

Thomson,    82,    84,    86,    105,    134, 
146,   156 

see  also  Point  Barrow  and  Point 
Hope 
Cape  Smythe  Whaling  and  Trading 

Company,  205 
Capes  wrongly  marked  on  map,  91 
Cariboo  Indians,  331  et  seq. 
Caribou: 

increasing,   19 

also  311,  331 
Caro,  lost  on  the  trail,  19  et  seq. 
Champlain  Society,  61,  274 
Chandalar  Country,  333 
Chandalar  Gap,   19 
Chandalar  Indians,  331  et  seq.,  340 
Chandalar   River:    11 

East  Fork,   19,  23 

Middle  Fork,  25 

West  Fork,  24 

overflow,   14 
Chandalar  Village,  11,  13  et  seq. 
Chandler  Lake,  54 
Charley    (Eskimo),  341 
Charley  River,   6 

Chart  of  coast  unreliable,  274,  280 
Chester    (Eskimo  guide),  93,  96 
Chelyuskin,  Cape,  244 
Chilkat  Indians,  332 
Chipewyan    Indians,   199 
Chipp,  Lieut.,  263 
Chipp  River.  54.  263 
Choris  Peninsula,  75,  88 


Christian,  Chief  of  Chandalars,  340 

Christian  River,  12 

Christmas  at  Point  Hope,  112 

Circumpolar  stations,  236,  263 

Clarence   River,   313 

Cloud  formation,  beautiful,  334 

Coal: 

at  Cape  Beaufort,  211 

at  Point  Hope,  221 

at  Wainwright,  194,  221 

below  Salmon  River,  66,  67 

Corwin  mine,   165  et  seq. 

Thetis  mine,   167 
"Coal   Mine"    (dog),   165 
Coldfoot,   11,  25,  26,   106 
Colleen  River,  329 

hard  descent  of,  343,  344 
Collie,  Alexander,  surgeon  Blossom, 

88,  194 
Collie  Point,   194 
Collinson    (of  the  Enterprise),   88, 

103,  242  et  seq.,  295,  301 
Collinson  Point,  300  et  seq. 
Colville,     Andrew,     Governor     Hud- 
son's Bay  Company,  278,  280 
Colville  River: 

delta  of,  272 

prehistoric  trade  route,  277,  278, 
331 

also  20,  75,  149,  229,  309 
Colville  River  people,  270 
Columbia  River,  75 
Company    of    Adventurers,    Cowie, 

325 
Congregational  missions,   105 
Conquering  the  Arctic  Ice,  Mikkel- 

sou,  157 
Cook,  Capt.  James,  75,  87,  89,  91, 
95,  101,  157,  189,  190,  241,  283 
Cook's  Inlet,  5 

Copper    (Blond)    Eskimos,  326,  328 
Copper  River,  mapped  by  army  of- 
ficers, 52 
Coppermine  River,  60,  189,  199 
Coronation  Gulf,  91,  276,  325 
Coronation  Gulf  Country,  271 
Corwin  coal  mine,  165,  166 
Corwin,   U.    S.   revenue   cutter,   53, 

102,   166 
Cowie,    Company    of    Adventurers, 

325 
Crabs,  in  Arctic  Ocean,  121 
"  Cram,"    U.    S.    commissioner    at 

Point  Barrow,  179 
Cross  Island,  295,  301 


Dall,  W.  H.,  54,  278 

Alaska  and  Its  Resources,  298 
Dancing,  native,   112,  113 


352 


INDEX 


Danish   government,   care   of   Eski- 
mos, 219 
Dease    (British  hydrographer ) ,  95, 

242,  267,  272 
Dease   and    Simpson's    Expeditions, 

273 
Dease  Inlet,  242,  263 
Deception  Cape,  241 
Deering  (Eskimo  village),  68 
DeLong,  Commander  Jewnnette,  53, 

61,  232,  263,  306 
Delta  of  Kobuk  River,  74 
Demarcation  Point: 

advisability  of  mission,  312 
resort  of  Eskimos,  312 
also  308,  310,  347 
Denali   (Mt.  McKinley),  151,  284 
Denali's  wife,  284 
Department  of  Justice,  IT.  S.,  136 
Disenchantment  Bay,  241 
-.   "-Divea."  an  Eskimo,  255 
/    Dogs: 
I        Argo,  dean  of  dogs,  150,  151 

bad  treatment  by  Eskimos,  192 

"Coal  Mine,"  165 

difficulty  in  procuring,  147 

exposure  to  weather,  90 

food  supply  a  problem,   15,  230, 

276,  282 
Fox,  a  leader,  77 

\hard  to  keep  on  course,  77 
Kerawak,  a  personality,  120,  149, 
150,  266,  302 
Malamutes,  147 

Moose,  death  of,  56 
our  teams,  149  et  seq. 
racing  at  Nome  hurts  breed,  148 
sense  of  smell  acute,  265,  266 
"Skookum,"  165 
sore  feet,  276 
sudden  death  of  one,  165 
suffering  from  extremes  in  tem- 
perature, 344 
their  bark  a  delight,  345 
V.£flg-racing  at  Nome,  148 
Dolphin   Straits,   326 
Driggs,    Dr.    John    B.,    founder    of 
Pt.  Hope  mission,  105,  108,  128 
et  seq. 
Duchess  of  Bedford,  the,  290,  291, 

295 
"  Dynamite  Dutchman,"  the,  28 

E 

Eagle,  117 

East  Cape,  305 

Easter,  a  poor,  302 

East  India   Company,   186 

Elizabeth,  Cape,  241 

EUesmere  Land,  253 


Ellice,    Et.    Hon.    Edward,    M.P., 

272 
Ellice  Point,  272 
Elson  Bay,  243,  263 
Elson,    Thomas     (officer    Blossom), 
88,   190,  204,  205,  209,  241   et 
seq.,  263,   282 
Endicott  Mountains,  27,  106 
Enterprise,     the,      103,     241,     243, 

301 
Episcopal  missions,  70,  105,  220 
Escholtz  Bay,  335 
Eskimo  ice  cream,   112 
Eskimo,    The    (Publication    of    Bu- 
reau of  Education),  132 
Eskimos: 

antiquities,  104 

attachment  to  their  country,  253 
at  peace  with  Indians,  34 
baptism  of  old  couple,  343 
characteristic  traits,  248,  256 
Colville  River  people,  270,  311 
communal  system,  254 
content  their  normal  state,  256 
Copper    ("Blond")    E.,   326,   328 
courage  and  cheerfulness,  246,  247 
dancing,  expert,  112 
development  along  natural  lines, 

254 
"  Dives,"  an  Eskimo,  255 
experiment  in  concentration,  68 
exposure  of  the  old  and  infants, 

249,  250 
fuel  problem  pressing,  143 
health    conserved    in    Greenland, 

219 
hospitality,  93,  308 
"  ice  cream,"  112 
improvement  in  morals,  162 
industry  and  cheerfulness,  163 
Ipanee  Eskimos,  104,  184,  250 
Kupowra  people,  311 
mastery  over  adverse  conditions, 

247 
migrations  of,   63 
missions  should  train  in  wilder- 
ness arts,  38 
no  "  double  standard  "  of  morals, 

161 
no  self-consciousness,  231 
panics  among,  199 
plane  of  civilization,  256 
policy  of  concentration,  214 
roving  inland  bands,  311 
Bimple  piety,  232 


Fairbanks,  270 

First  birds,  334 

First  vegetation,  329,  334 


INDEX 


353 


Firth    (trader  at  Ft.  Macpherson), 

330 
Firth  River,  329 

"Blow  Hole,"  335 
Flaw-whaling: 

description   of,   234,   235 

also   145,   194,  224 
Flaxman  Island: 

arrival   at,   286 

departure   from,   300 

Easter  at,  300 

for  whom  named,  289,  320 

Good  Friday  at,  293 

also  229,  296,  311 
Foggy  Island,   282,  283 
Footprints,  lasting,  284 
Forrest,    Mr.    and    Mrs.,    194,    195, 

198  et  seq. 
Fort  Cosmos,  54 
Fort  Yukon: 

Amundsen  at,  346 

change  made  by  mission,  161 

chief  fur  market,  324 

hospital  at,  321 

return  to,  347 

start  from,  6 

when  built,  278 

also  225,  332,  340,  342 
Fox  (a  dog),  a  leader,  77 
Fram,  the,  244 
Franklin,  Sir  John: 

a  knight  "  sans  peur  et  sans  re- 
proche,"  333,  334 

search  for,  103,  241,  325 

served  at  Trafalgar,  289 

also  59,  76,  86,  95,  174,  190,  232, 
267,  280  et  seq.,  299,  301,  308, 
309,  313,  319,  330 
Franklin    and    Beechey,    failure    to 
determine      northwest      limits, 
282,  283 
Franklin  Mountains,   177,   283,  302 
Franklin  Point,  281 
Franz  Josef  Land,  57 
Fraser  River,  75 
Frobisher,  Martin,  247 
Fry,  Rev.  Mr.  and  Mrs.,   315,   321 
Furs: 

Fort  Yukon  chief  market,  324 

increase  in  jjrice,  323,  324 

in  history,  48 

necessary  for  coast  travel,  84 

postal  laws  affect  market,  187, 
196 

principal  commodity  at  Ilerschel 
Island  and  Point  Barrow,  322, 
323 

sea-otter  fur  ruins  Aleutian 
Islanders,    103 

"  summer  furs "  threaten  exist- 
ence of  natives,  307 


Furs    {cont.)  : 

trading  stations,  310,  324 
wandering  fur  buyer,  123 

Funston,  Gen.,  310 

G 

Gabriel's  cabin,  345,  346 
Gens  de  large,  331  et  seq. 
Geographic    Dictionary    of   Alaska, 

Baker,  300 
George   (guide),  263,  264,  267,  311, 

329,  330 
Gerling,  missionary  among  "  Blond  " 

Eskimos,  326  et  seq. 
Gjoa,     the,     first     ship     to     make 

complete  northern  passage,  243 
Glacier,  Muldrow,  151 
Goodhope  Bay,  241 
Goose,  Tom   (Eskimo),  178 
Gordon's    station,    service    at,    311, 

312 
Gordon,  Tom,  fur  trader,  310 
Government    reindeer-relief    expedi- 
tion, 236 
Governors    of    Alaska    appeal    for 

medical  aid  for  natives,  220 
Great  Fish  River,  267 
Greely,  Lieut.,  108,  305 
Greenland:    119,  292 

medical    aid    by    government    for 

Eskimos,  219 
Griffin  Point,  308 
Gwydyr  Bay,  281,  297 


Hadley,  Capt.,  304  et  seq. 
Halkett,  Cape: 

extreme  low  temperature,  272 

also  268,  274,  302 
Halkett,  director  of  Hudson's  Bay 

Company,  272 
Hanbury,  David,  325 
Handbook     of     Polar     Discoveries, 

Greely,  305 
"  Happy  Jack  "  's  place,  65 
Harding,  agent  at  Ilerschel  Island, 

325 
Harper,  Arthur   (pioneer),  29 
Harper,   Walter : 

and  the  old  woman,  182  et  seq. 

birthday  celebration,  113 

confidences,  337 

diary,  338 

early  recollections,  42 

good    humour    and    cheerfulness, 
160,  344 

marriage  and  death,  Preface 

preparation  for  college,  5 


354 


INDEX 


Harper,  Walter   (cont.)  : 

proficiency  in  wilderness  arts,  9, 

51,  113,  125,  226,  267 
resourcefulness,  227,  229 
Shakespeare  on  the  trail,  9,  30, 

66,  94,   114,   168,   297 
typhoid  fever  and  recovery,  26 
volunteers  for  war.  Preface,  338 
also  31.  149,  151,  168  et  seq.,  187 
Harrison  Bay,  177,  272,  274,  275 
Harrison,    Benjamin,    Deputy-gover- 
nor   Hudson's    Bay    Company, 
272 
Headwaters    of    Arctic    Ocean    and 

Yukon  River  streams,  340 
Heald    (Herald)    Point,   298 
Hearne,  Samuel,  60,  189,   199 
Henty,    educational     value    of    his 

books,  9  et  seq. 
Herald  Island,  53,  304 
Herald,  the,  243,  304 
Herbert,  John,   345 
Herendean,  Capt.,  249 
Herschel   Island: 
arrival  at,  315 
departure  from,  329,  330 
for  whom  named,  319,  320 
former  lawlessness,  320 
hospitality  at,  321 
Hudson's     Bay     Company     post, 

322 
only  two  mails  a  year,  329 
services  in  the  vernacular,  326 
Stefansson  ill  at,  295 
also    3,    83,    102,    119,    229,    243, 
250,    278,    310,    311,    313,    315, 
346,  347 
Herschel  Island  (Firth)  River,  329, 

337,  341 
Herschel,  Sir  John  F.  W.,  scientist 

and  man  of  letters,  319 
Hester,  missionary  among  "  Blond  " 

Eskimos,  326  et  seq. 
Hinchinbrook  Island,  241 
History  of  Whaling,  103 
Hogatzatnu  River,  49 
Holy  Cross  Alission,   139 
Hooper,  Capt.,  166 
Hope,  Sir  William  Johnston,  96 
Hopson,  Fred,  212 
Hotham    Inlet : 

for  whom  named,  77 
also  53,  75,  89 
Howard,  Ensign  W.  L.,  243,  263 
Hudson's  Bay  Company:   267 
business  methods,   322 
history  needed,  273 
original  charter,  273 
rivalry  with  N.  W.  Co.,  272 
also  242,  268.  312,  322 
Hudson's  Bay  House,  274 


Hudson,  Henry,  245 
Hula-Hula  River,  302,  311 
Humphrey's  Point,  308 
Hunt  River,  66 


"Ice  cream"    (Eskimo),   112 

Icy  Cape,  124,  125,  134,  189,  190,  283 

Icy  Reef,  309 

Ik-pik-puk  (Chipp)  River,  263 

Indians: 

Cariboo  Indians,  331  et  seq. 

Chandalar  Indians,  331  et  seq. 

Chilkat  Indians,  332 

Chipewyan  Indians,  199 

communal  system,  254 

Gens  de  large,  331  et  seq. 

helpfulness,   12 

Ketchumstocks,   117 

panic  among,  199 

plane  of  civilization,  256 

resourcefulness  of  women,  16 

trade  in  firearms,  332 
Interpreter,  limitations  of,  201 
Investigator,  the,  rounds  Point  Bar- 
row, 243 
Ipanee  Eskimos,   104,   184,  250 
Islands : 

Aleutian  Islands,   101,  331 

Barter,  295,  304,  309,  314,  329 

Bathurst,  201 

Cross,  295,  301 

Foggy,  282,  283 

Herald    (Heald),  53,  304 

Hinchinbrook,  241 

Loo-Choo  Islands,  186 

Lyttleton,  108 

New  Siberian  Islands,  302 

Sea-horse,  202 

St.  Lawrence,  102 

St.  Matthew,  102 

Victoria,  233,  253,  307,  325 

Wrangell,   304,  314 

see    also    Flaxman    Island,    Her- 
schel Island 
I-yag-ga-tak  River,  156,  158, 159,  164 


Jabbertown,  97,  108 

Jackson,  Frederick,  57 

Jackson,    Sheldon,     103,     105,     138, 

142,  219,  253 
Jarvis,  Lieut.,  236 
Jeannette,  the,  53,  304  et  seq. 
John  River,  30 
John,  Robert,  12 
Joseph    (Eskimo),  342 
Journal  of  the  Yukon,  Murray,  332 
Juneau,  135,  181 


INDEX 


355 


Kamschatka  "  promyshleniks,"   101, 
225 

Ka/rluk,  Last  Voyage  of  the,  Bart- 

lett,  304 
Ka/rluk,  the: 

survivors  of  the,  314 
also  234,  243,  304 
Keenan  Land,  306 
Kelh'tt    (commander    Herald),    243, 

304,  306 
KeraAvak      (malamute     dog),      120, 

149,   150,   266,  302 
Ketchumstock  Indians,   117 
King  and  Wing,  the,  304 
KivalinH,    91    et    seq.,    134    et   seq., 

140,   143,   144,   146,   162 
Knights  of  the  Arctic,  87 
Kobuk  River: 

claimed  by  Quakers,  70 
delta  of,  74 

mapped  by  naval  oflScers,  52 
mouths  of,  75 
section  noted  for  wind,  66 
also  11,  49,  51,  89,  263,  278 
Kotzebue : 

arrival  at,  77 

departure   from,  85 

mail  between  K.  and  Pt.  Barrow, 

125 
Sunday  at  mission,  83 
also  91,  136,  140,  241,  246,  302 
Kotzebue,  Otto  von,   75 

fear  of  English,  332 
Kotzebue  Sound:   331 

immemorial  trade  route,  332 
also    11,    86,   241,   278,    282,   283, 
328,  336 
Koyukuk,  canon  of,  28 
Koyukuk  River: 

mapped  by  army  officers,  52 
South  Fork,  11,  33 
upper  river,  269 
also  278 
Krusenstern,  Cape,  85 
Kukpuk  River,   155 
Ku-pou-ruk  River,  182 
Kuskokwin  River: 

mapped  by  army  officers,  52 
Moravian  missions,  70 
Kyana   (Thank  you),  67 


Labret    (lip  ornament),  46 
Lagoons    (characteristic    of   coast), 

97 
Lakes : 

Big,  149,  340 

Chandler,  54 


Lakes  (cont.)  : 
Reindeer,  61 
Selby,  52,  54 
Walker,  54 
Lamont,  Constable,  321 
Lapland,   139 

Lapps   (herders  of  reindeer),  139 
Last    of    the    Arctic    Voyages,    Bel- 
cher, 88 
Last    Voyage   of  the  Karluk,  Bart- 

lett,   225,   304,   314 
Laughing  Joe's  Place,  314 
Laut,  Agnes,  273 
Lay,  George  I.,  186 
Lay,  Point,   186,   188 
Leavitt,   George    (guide),  230,  264, 

265,    275,    283,    286,    297,    300, 

329,  330 
Leffingvvell,  Ernest  deKoven: 

report  and  maps,  292,  293,  297  et 

seq. 
also  290,  291,  295,  302,  310 
Legends,  Indian  and  Eskimo,  132 
Lemmings : 

migration  of,  227 

self-destruction,  228 
Lisburne,  Cape,   106,   130,   156,  221, 

292,  305 
"Little  Pete"    (guide),  84,  92 
Loo-Choo  Islands,    186 
Loola,   Rev.  William,  340 
Lopp,  W.  T.,  105,  142,  236 
"Lop-sticks"     (to     mark    a    site), 

51 
Lutheran   (Swedish)   Mission,  70 
Lynn  Canal,   332 
Lyttleton  Island,  108 


M 


Mackenzie  River,  76,  325 

Mackenzie,  Sir  Alexander,  325 

Malamute  dogs,  147 

Malaspina,  241 

Manning  Point,  299,  308 

Maps  of  coast,  inaccuracy  of,  281 

Maps  make  strange  bedfellows,  298 

Marco  Polo,  46 

Marriage  law  of  Alaska: 

compliance  impossible,  135  et  seq. 

folly  of,  342 
Marryat  Cove    (or  Inlet),   155,   166 
Marsh,   Dr.,  218 
Marsh,    George     (officer    Blossom), 

88,   194 
Marsh   Point,   194 
Mawson,  Sir  Douglas,  185 
Mayo   (j)ioncer),  29 
Meade   River,   263 
"  Meta  Incognita,"  247 
Methodist  Missions,  70 


356 


INDEX 


Metropolitan    Museum    of    Natural 

History,  214 
McClintock,  Sir  Leopold,  87,  242,  245 
McClure,  Sir  Robert,  76,  87,  243,  341 
McChire's  Discover])   of   the  Noi'th- 

ivest  Passage,  Osborn,  306 
McGuire,   243 
Mclntyre,    Sam,   interesting   career, 

302 
McQueston   (pioneer),  29 
Michie,  Dr.  H.  C,  218 
Midnight  sun,  60,   61 
Mikkelsen,    Conquering    the    Arctic 

Ice,  157 
Missionary,    the     (his    contribution 

to  world's  knowledge ) ,  326 
Missions: 

Episcopal,  3,  70,  105,  220 

see  also  Allakaket,  Fort  Yukon, 
Point  Hope 
Lutheran,   70 
Presbyterian,  70,  105,  218,  221 

see  also  Point  Barrow 
Quaker,  68 

Roman  Catholic,  139,  220 
Moose    (dog),  death  of,  56 
Moravian    missionaries    in    Green- 
land, 70,  86 
Mountains : 

A-mahk-too-sook,  177 
Buckland,   333,   335,   336 
Denali   (Mt.  McKinley),  151,  284 
Donali's  Wife,   284 
Endicott,  27,   106 
Franklin,   177,  283,  302 
Mulgrave  Hills,  89 
Mt.  St.  Elias,  180,  241 
Mt.   St.   Elias,   180,  241 
Mountain     Indian      (Firth)     River, 

330,  333 
Muir,  John,  102 
Muldrow  Glacier,  151 
Mulgrave  Hills,  89 
Murchison  Promontory,  209 
Murray,  Alexander  Hunter: 
builder  of  Ft.  Yukon,  278 
fear  of  Russians,  332 


N 


Nancy   Dawson,   the    (first   ship   to 

round  Pt.  Barrow),  243 
Nansen,   244 
Nelson,  Horatio,   89 
New  Siberian  Islands,  302 
New  Year's  Day  at  Pt.  Hope,  115 
News  of  the  war,  26,  65 
Nigalik,  the    (mission  launch),  166 
Noatuk  (the  Inland)   River,  75 

mapped  by  naval  officers,  52 

also  278 


Nome: 

dog-racing  at,  148 

also  72,   132,   139,  148,  149 
Noorvik    (Quaker  mission)  : 

a  daring  experiment,  68  et  seq. 

hospitality   at,   72 

departure  from,  74 

also  65,  209 
Northern  Extreme,  the,  239 
Northern   Passage: 

search  for,  241 

western  gateway  of,  240,  241 
Northwest  Passage,   302,  346 
North  West  Company,  rivalry  with 

Hudson's  Bay  Company,   272 
Northwest  Mounted  Police:   271 

Posts  of,   102,  315 
Norton  Sound,  269 
Noses,  freezing,  158 
Nulato,  72,  221,  332 
Nushagak    (Russian  post),  331 
Nflwuk       (Eskimo      settlement     at 
Point   Barrow),   209,   239,   245, 
270 

O 

Ogilvie,  29 

Old  Crow  River,  329 

Oliktok  Point,  280 

Cola    (Eskimo  lad),  35,  36,  50,  52, 

65,  66,  75 
Osborn,  Admiral  Sherrard,  76 

McClure' s       Discovery       of      the 
Northwest  Passage,  307 
Oxenstiern,   196 


Paleocrystic  Ice,  244 

Parker,   Prof.,    284 

Parry,  Sir  Edward,  86,  244,  248 

Pauf  (Indian),  7,  18,  25,  26 

Peard    (Pearl)    Bay,  204,  221 

Peard    (Pearl)    Cape,   298 

Peard,    George     (officer    Blossom), 

88 
Peary,  Admiral  Robert: 

system  of  supporting  parties,  295 
also  108,  245 
People    of    the    Polar   North,    The, 

Rasmussen,  248 
Petermann,  Dr.,  306 
Phillips  Bay,   289 
Phillips,  Prof.  R.  A.,  289 
Phipps.    Capt.    Constantine     (Lord 

Mulgrave),  89 
Pim,  Capt.  Bedford,  52 
Pipe  Spit,  77 
Pitt  Point,  268,  274 
Placer  mining,  271 
Plover  Land,  306 


INDEX 


357 


Plover,  the,  243 

Point  Barrow: 

arrival     at,     204,     205,     209     et 

seq. 
arrival  of  first  white  man,  282 
departure  from,  239,  263 
fuel  problem  pressing,  214,  221 
fur  industry,  196,  198,  310 
interesting  history,  235,  236 
is  there  land  to  the  north?  244, 

245 
mail  between  P.  B.  and  Kotzebue, 

125 
named   by   Beechey,   242 
need  for  hospital,  218 
Presbyterian  mission,   70,   105 
reindeer   at,    139 
rostral  column  at,  243 
social  gathering,  a,  224 
threshold  of  the  unknown,  244 
whaling  season,  234 
also  3,  20,  152,  233,  283 

Point  Hope: 

a  bad  night  at,  130,  131 
arrival  at,  112 
Christmas  at,  112 
coal  supply  inadequate,  115 
coal   supply,   166,   167 
departure  from,   155 
distance  from  Kotzebue,  84 
Driggs,  Dr.  John  B.,  at,  105,  109, 

128  et  seq. 
improvement  in,  160,  161 
library  at,   121 
New  Year's  Day  at,  115 
no  commissioner  at,   136 
only  Episcopal  mission  on  Arctic 

coast,  3,  70 
our  first  objective,   11 
reason  for  location,  107 
school  under  difficulties,   116 
story  of,  104  et  seq. 
village  council,   162 
whaling  season,  234 
also  96,   147,   182,  243 

Point  Sir  Henry  Martin,  308 

Polar  Bear,  the,  304 

Pouting,  Herbert,  Preface 

Porcupine  River,  3,  4,  310,  328,  329, 
340,   345,   347 

Portage    (between   Alatna  and  Ko- 
buk  Rivers),  48  et  seq. 

Post  Office  Dept.,  196  et  seq. 

Presbyterian  missions,  70,  105,  218, 
221 

Primitive  peoples  prey  of  dissolute 
white  men,  102 

Primus  stove,  175 

Prince  Alfred  Point,  309 

Prince  of  Wales  Cape,  105,  109,  236, 
243 


Prince  William's  Sound,  5,  241 
Princess     Sophia,      S.S.,      loss     of, 

Preface 
Prudhoe  Bay,  283,  297 
Putnam,  Charles  Flint,  55 
Putnam  River,  263 


Quaker  mission  (Noorvik),  68 

R 

Rampart  House,  321,  328,  329,  341 
Rasmussen    (old  trapper),  307 
Rasmussen,    Knud,    The    People    of 

the  Polar  North,  248 
Ray,  Lieut.,  236,  263 
Reading  under  difficulties,   284 
Red  River,  279 
Red  River  Enterprise,  280 
Reed  River,  54 
Reese,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  135,  141,  143, 

146,  162 
Refuge  Inlet,  221 
Reindeer : 

brought  from  Lapland,  139 

communal  meat  cellar,  200 

fairs,  142 

government  relief  expedition,  236 

herders,  93 

introduction  by  Sheldon  Jackson, 
138  et  seq. 

Point  Hope  herd,  164 

Wainwright  herd,   194,  195 

also  219,  269 
Remarkable    History    of    the    Hud- 
son's Bay  Company,  Bryce,  273 
Return  Reef,  282 
Richardson,  Sir  John: 

books  by,  86 

searching  expedition,  278 

tribute  to  Sir  John  Franklin,  333 
Rivers : 

Ah-ka-lu-rak,  156,  158,  164 

Alatna,  11,  39,  48 

Ambler,  54 

Babbage,   319 

Barter,  311 

Buckland,  335 

Canning,  296,  297,  311 

Chandalar,  11,  14 
East   Fork,    19,   23 
Middle  Fork,  25 
West  Fork,  24 

Charley,  6 

Chipp    (Ik-pik-puk),  54.  263 

Christian,   12 

Clarence,   313 

Colleen,   329,   343,  344 

Columbia,  75 


358 


INDEX 


Colville,    20,    75,    149,    229,    272, 
277,  278,  309,  331 

Copper,  52 

Coppermine,  60,   189,   199 

Firth,   329,  335 

Fraser,  75 

Great   Fiah,   267 

Herschel  Island,  329,  337,  341 

Hogatzatna,   49 

Hula-Hula,   302,   311 

Hunt,  66 

Ik-pik-puk    (Chipp),  263 

I-yag-ga-tak,  156,  158,  159,  164 

John,  30 

Kobuk,  11,  49,  51,  52,  66,  70,  89, 
263    278 

Koyukuk,  52,  269,  278 
South  Fork,   11,  33 

Kukpuk,   155 

Ku-pou-ruk,  182 

Kuskokwim,  52,  70 

Kwikpak,  278 

Mackenzie,   76,  325 

Meade,   263 

Mountain    Indian     (Firth),    330, 
333 

Noatak,  52,  75,  278 

Porcupine,    3,    4,    310,    328,    329, 
340,   345,  347 

Putnam,  263 

Red,  279 

Reed,  54 

Salmon   (Skeenjik),  66,  340 

Selawik,  52,  75 

Slate  Creek,  25 

Sushitna,   52 

Tanana,  52 

Turner,    311 

Yukon,  27,  32,  70,  75,  223,  228, 
278 
Rodgers,  the,  U.S.S..,  53,  244,  304, 

305 
Roman  Catholic  Missions,  220 
Romanzoff,  Count  Nicholas,  302 
Ross,  Sir  James  Clark,  241 
Ross,  Sir  John,  86,  245,  248 
Rowe,  Rt.  Rev.  P.  T.: 

characteristic  story  of,  303 

offers  to  make  test  case  of  mar- 
riage law,  136 

also   128,   313 
Royal   Geographical    Soc,   219,   242 
Rupert's  Land,  274 
Russian   Jew    (a  degenerate),   307, 
326,  327 


S 


Sabine,  Cape: 

Greely's  camp,  108 
also    167,    168 


St.  Andrew's  Day  at  Sonoko  Billy's. 

43  ' 

St.  Lawrence  Bay,  53 
St.  Lawrence   Island,   102 
St.  Matthew  Island,   102 
St.   Michael    (tuberculosis  at),  218 
St.  Thomas's  Mission,  108 
Salmon,    necessity    for   native    life. 

15 
Salmon  cannery  causes  famine,  15, 

16 
Salmon    (Skeenjik)    River,   66,   340 
Sastrugi    (windrows),   185,  186 
Sea-horse  Islands,   202 
Seal,  skinning  a,  123 
Sealing,  107 
Seal  meat  as  food,  176 
Secrets  of  Polar  Travel,  The,  Pearv. 

108  ' 

Selawik   River : 

mapped  by  naval  officers,  52 
also  75 
Selby  Lake,  52,  54 
Selkirk,   Lord,   278 
Sella,  Vittoria,  Preface 
V  Seward    Peninsula,    65,     136,     138, 
i  303 

Sheddon  (first  to  round  Point  Bar- 
row), 243 
Sheldon  Jackson,  Life  of,  225 
Shields,  W.  H.,  141,  142 
Shingle    Point,    324 
Shrimps  in  Arctic  Ocean,   121 
Shungnak,  56  et  seq. 

departure  from,  65,  69 
Siberia,    coast    of,    139,     166,    278, 

314,  331 
Sickler,     Mr.      (superintendent     at 

Shungnak ) ,    auroral    photogra- 
pher, 57  et  seq. 
Signal  corps,  169 
Simpson,   Cape,   267 
Simpson,    Governor    Hudson's    Bay 

Company,   267 
Simpson,  Thomas,  Narrative  of  the 

Discovery   of  the  North  Coast 

of  America,  61 
also  95,  242,  243,  244,  278 
Simpson,    Sir   George,    Governor   of 

Rupert's   Land,   280 
Skookum    (dog),   165 
Skull    Cliff,    204 
Slate   Creek,   25 
Sled-bells    (an  illusion),  21 
Smith  Bay,  268 
Smith  Sound,  306 
Smithsonian     Institution,     Preface, 

68,  63 
Smythe  Cape,  204,  209 
Smythe,  William   (ofBcer  Blossom), 

88,   190,  204,  205 


INDEX 


359 


Snow-houses,  art  of  building,   275, 

276 
Snowshoes  indispensable,  336,  337 
Society  of  Friends: 

attitude  towards  war,  70 
intolerance,   71 
Sonoko  Billy,  43 
South  Forks  Flats,  25 
Spence,  Dr.,    179,    195,  210,   214   et 

seq.,  231,  233 
Spitzbergen,   89,  239,  240 
Sport  and  Travel  in  the  Northwest, 

Hanbury,   325 
Squirrel  River,  gold  on,  67 
Stamboul,  the,  306 
Starfish  in  Arctic  Ocean,  121 
Steen,  Paul,   303 
Stefansson,  V.: 

base  camp,   295,  304 

ill  with  typhoid,  321  et  seq. 

meeting  with,   346,   347 

My  Life  with  the  Eskimo,  276 

also   76,   213,  218,  244,   253,   306, 

309,   325,  326 
Stipendiary   magistrates,    need    for, 

137 
Stockton,  Lieut.  Commander,  U.  S. 

N.,  103,  129,  243,  250,  295 
Stoney,  Lieut.,  52  et  seq.,  263 
Storkerson,    Storker,    244,   295,   306 
Stringer,     Rt.     Rev.     I.     O.,     D.D., 

Bishop     of     Yukon     Territory, 

213 
Strong,  Governor.  220 
Sun,   first  appearance,   120 
Sunshine,   perpetual,   210 
Surveys,  recent,  274 
Sushitna  River,  mapped  by  army  of- 
ficers, 52 
Swineford,  Governor,  220 


Thomas,  Rev.  W.  A.,  missionary  at 
Point  Hope,  112,  113,  123,  125, 
132  et  seq.,  135,  136,  144,  152, 
155,  158,  187 
Thomson,  Cape: 

dangerous  to  pass,  92 

force  of  wind  at,   94 

picturesqueness  of,  96 

also  84,  105,   134,  146,  156 
Thornton,   Harrison: 

murder  of,  109 

also  105,  129 
Tig-a-ra    (Point  Hope),  105 
Titus    (Eskimo  guide),  339   et  seq. 
Tobacco,     prohibition     at    missions 

unwise,  216 
Toboggan  versus  sled,  24,  28 
Trapping: 

cruelty  of,   47 

necessity    for,    47 

will  exterminate  animals,  55 

also   224,  225 
Turnagain  Arm,  241 
Turner,  J.  H.,  of  coast  survey,  310 
Turner  River,  310,  311 
Twelve-mile   creek,   27 
Typhoid  fever  at  Fort  Yukon  and 

Herschel  Island,  4,  321 
Tyrrell,  J.  B.,  61 


U 


Unalaklik,  269 

Unalaska,   139 

Union  Straits,  326 

U.  S.   Geological  Survey,  292,  299, 

300 
Upernavik,  209 
Utkiavik    (Eskimo  village  at  Point 

Barrow),  209 


Tanana,  149,  221,  284 
Tanana  Crossing,  117 
Tanana  River,  mapped  by  army  of- 
ficers, 52 
Tangent  Point,  264 
Temperature : 

61  below,  April  5th!   314,  315 

58  below  at  Black  Jack's  Place, 
42 

one  of  the  lowest  on  record,  39 

native  thermometer,   39 
Thanksgiving  Day  at  Black  Jack's 

Place,  42 
Thetis  coal  mine,  167 
Thetis,  the: 

at  Point  Hope,  103 

visits  Point  Barrow,  249 

also  243 


Vancouver,  75,  95,  101,  108 
Veniaminoff    (missionary),   101 
Victoria  Island,  235,  253,   307,  325 
Vincennes,  U.S.S.,  304,  305 
Voyages  Through  the  Continent   of 
North  America,  Mackenzie,  325 

W 

Wainwright: 
arrival  at,   194 
departure  from,  201 
fur  industry,   196,   197 
reindeer  at,'  185,    194 
also  124,  191,  193,  200,  203,  255, 
293 
Wainwright,     John      (officer     Blos- 
som), 88,  194 


360 


INDEX 


Wainwright  Inlet,  125,  194 

Walker  Lake,  54 

Walrus,  203 

Walru8  hunting,    194 

Western  Union  Telegraph  Company 

Exploration,  278 
Whaling : 

flaw-whaling,   145,   194,  224,  234, 

235 
history  of  whaling,    103 
loss  of  fleet,  235 
no  market  for  whalebone,  211 
whales   wonderful    creatures,    235 
whalebone  curse  of  Eskimos,  103 
Wilson,    Beckles,    The    Great    Com- 
pany, 273 
Windows,      seal-gut      better      than 

glass.  111 
"Whiskey  Jack,"  74 
Whittaker,    Archdeacon    of    Yiikon 

Territory,  213,  321,  326 
"Woollies,"  97 


Worst  day  of  the  journey,  285, 
286 

Wrangell  Island,  53,  304,  314 

Wrangell  Land,  305 

Wright,  W.  H.,  Misinforming  a  Na- 
tion, 88 


Yarborough  Inlet,  283,  287,  298 

Yukon  Flats,  11,  14 

Yukon  Kiver: 
closes  early,  27 
compared  to  Danube,  32 
discovered  piecemeal,  278 
Episcopal  missions  on,  70 
migration  of  lemmings,  228 
also  75,  223 


Zane  Pass,  64 


H 


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